Amalgamate
by Spiritus Rex
Summary: (Amalgamate: combine or unite to form one organization or structure) Hiro knows that they call him Yokai. He doesn't really understand why though. He thought his name was Hiro, and he was pretty sure he was alive, the last he checked. So why do they call him a ghost? Perhaps the buzzing in his head had the answers. (slow building plot)
1. Vestige

**AN: Here I am, with my second fanfic for Big Hero 6! This story is a lot less planned out (currently) than Technological Advancement was by the time I posted chapter 1, but, I'm deciding to post this chapter, work some things out, take my time, and then work to make this story one of my very very best. I've certainly got an end result I'm working towards, and it's gonna be good. For those of you keeping an eye on Flight of the Dragonlords (my current in progress Merlin fic) though, this means that, due to me diverting my attention onto this fic (and other bh6 AUs that I am working out in collabs with other people) Flight of the Dragonlords is going on Hiatus. Hopefully though, Amalgamate will be something interesting, not just for you readers, but for me as well, that will make it worth it. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 1 - Vestige: a trace of something that is disappearing or no longer exists<p>

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><p>It was almost winter, and so the air was cold between the towering neon buildings that made up most of downtown San Fransokyo. Nights like these made Hiro Hamada regret leaving his legs exposed in his super-suit, as he clung to Baymax's back and allowed the robot to carve its own path through the crisp air, trying not to shiver as the cold wind sliced through him. Hiro made a mental note to, in the team's next upgrade, modify the fabric and extend parts of their suits to keep them warm in the winter months that were fast approaching. It never really snowed much in San Fransokyo though, but the winds that would whip into the city from the bay could be killer. Hiro trembled against Baymax's back just thinking of what that wind, when it came, would do to his legs if they were still exposed by then. Out of the entire team, Fred was definitely going to be the most warm, with his full body suit and fire breathing abilities. Hiro almost envied him.<p>

As Baymax and Hiro flew on through the air, patrolling the city, Hiro could see on the streets directly below him Gogo as she cut her way with streaks of yellow around cars and pedestrians. Hiro leaned a bit to get a better look at his teammate, keeping the palms of his hands and the toes of his feet firmly pressed to the magnets holding him on Baymax's back as he did so, and said "How's it looking down there Gogo?"

Gogo took a hard left around a corner into an alley, glanced up only for a fraction of a second while her discs were slanted sideways, saw Hiro and Baymax, and then resumed her steady pace skating forward once the turn was complete. Hiro lost sight of her then as he continued forward, but he wasn't concerned. "It's looking pretty good, I must say." She spoke, her voice breathless from exertion in Hiro's ear. "All the back alleys I've checked along the way so far are alright."

Hiro nodded despite the fact Gogo could not see him, and then said, "Wasabi and Honey, you both okay?"

Wasabi and Honey Lemon tended to go the same route together when the team was on patrol. Both of them, though quick on their feet, were unable to move as unobstructedly or quickly as Hiro, Gogo, Fred, and Baymax could. In result, they relied on each other, or more accurately, Honey's chemicals, to both catch and move them both quickly across rooftops where there were no pedestrians to possibly hit with a chem-ball or a laser blade.

"We're great, Hiro!" Came Honey Lemon's voice. Hiro smiled at her chipper tones, which was soon followed by Wasabi's far deeper voice,

"All good over here, little man. Looks like there's no crime tonight."

"_Dude!"_ Burst in Fred's voice, so loud and sudden that Hiro winced as it rang through his helmet. "You did not just say that. Oh man, now we're jinxed. There's gonna be crime somewhere now."

Hiro rolled his eyes as he pressed his body close to Baymax's back during an incline in the robot's flight path. As he was silent, Baymax responded to Fred, "I do not believe that those words alone will directly cause a crime to be committed." The healthcare companion spoke in the very honest and matter-of-fact way that was characteristic of him, "So you have nothing to fear." Hiro snickered, and smiled against the red metal of Baymax's flight suit.

"So, buddy." Hiro said to Baymax, "If no crime is gonna magically appear because of what Wasabi said, do you think we should turn in for the night?"

"I wouldn't be opposed to that." Came Gogo's tired voice. She sounded like she had stopped for the moment. Though Gogo was fast and strong, able to fight and plow her way forwards with the likeness of a speeding train, she was still only human, and was the one of them that had to use her body as her "powers" the most. Honey Lemon, Fred, and Wasabi could all walk and run as much as they pleased, so long as they could get within range to throw a chem ball, slice the villain up with lasers, or blast the bad guy with fire. But Gogo had to be constantly pumping her legs, constantly moving. She could throw her discs from afar if the speed got to be too much, but for Gogo, the speed was never too much, and so she'd never stop moving if they were in a battle. The result? A very tired Gogo, who often slept in odd places and chugged thick protein shakes while awake.

Baymax didn't respond for a few moments, focusing on navigating the thick maze of power lines and neon signs that they had entered into. When he and Hiro reached a patch of clear airspace, then the robot said, "Yes, I believe retiring for the night would be beneficial. It is currently 2:23 A.M."

"Usual meet up spot?" Honey was quick to chime in, sounding tired to Hiro as well now that Hiro was aware of the late - or rather, early - hour that they were awake at. Fred had a lot of early classes at San Fransokyo University too, and Honey had a lecture on something to do with elements than Hiro hadn't bothered to remember the name of at 10. Perhaps their patrols through the city and how long they lasted would have be cut back on.

Hiro ducked his head a bit as a high sign passed over him, and spotted to his left Honey and Wasabi leaping across the gap from one building rooftop to another. He took one hand away from the magnet holding him tightly to Baymax, pressed his palm to the side of his helmet, and, still looking in his teammates' direction answered Honey, "Yeah, lets g-"

Static _screeched_ through Hiro's ears, and his other hand left Baymax's back so he could grip both sides of his helmet with both hands. He reared away in pain at the sudden noise flooding his mind, and his toes arched away from Baymax just enough to pull away from the magnets there too.

"_Hi- o-? W-…ts-… ong? " _

Hiro tumbled from Baymax's back, and the robot instantly brought himself to a sharp halt in the air. He doubled back and twisted expertly, moving faster than the rest of the team had ever seen, stretching his large armored arms out at the same time to catch Hiro's small body before Hiro could fall too far. Honey and Wasabi stood and watched, useless on the rooftop they were on, eyes wide and hearts beating fast as for one chilling moment Hiro did not breathe in Baymax's arms. Baymax hovered in the air, stagnant, with his thrusters keeping him aloft and in one position, before he began to move steadily over to Honey Lemon and Wasabi, the nearest members of the team.

"Honey- Wasabi- What's goin on dudes?" Fred asked through the team's communication link, his voice mixing and mingling with Gogo's franticly shot off questions, "What's the situation? What's going on? Where's Hiro?"

Honey didn't respond, too busy hurrying towards Baymax the moment the large robot landed upon the rooftop. Wasabi took up the task of informing their elsewhere in the city friends, "Hiro's fine, Baymax caught him. Don't know what happened though, looked like he had a mini seizure while flying or something." Wasabi said, watching as Honey scooped Hiro out of Baymax's arms and lowered him carefully to the ground so that the healthcare companion could better lean over his young patient and check on him. Baymax removed Hiro's helmet with care, and his hyperspectral cameras clicked as he gave the young boy a quick scan.

"What's your location?" Gogo asked sharply.

Wasabi frowned, and went to peer over the edge of the roof. "Gogo, we're on top of a building."

"Where are you?"

"Yeah, Wasabi, tell us." Fred cut in, "I'll give her a lift up. C'mon, if Hiro's down and out we all gotta be there for the little guy."

It was at that moment that Hiro sucked in a sharp breath, popped his eyes open, and sat up so fast that his forehead collided with Baymax's hand. "Ouch! Ow- Baymax what-?" Hiro yelped and grumbled, reaching up to rub at his forehead, his eyes squinting as the spot there grew more red with the friction. Then, Hiro blinked, took in the rooftop he was lying on, took in Honey Lemon crouched before him and Baymax beside him, took in the fact that he was no longer flying on Baymax's back in the air, and tried to scramble quickly to his feet in confusion.

The moment he stood though, he swayed, discomfort lancing through his mind. Honey Lemon helped lower Hiro back down as he spluttered, "How did we- Baymax weren't we _just_ flying?"

"Yeah, you were, but then you decided to go and take a tumble." Wasabi answered instead of Baymax, having just told Gogo and Fred what building they were located on, and now rejoining the small cluster that was steadily growing around a pale faced Hiro.

Hiro continued to splutter, "What, I did not!" He looked to Baymax then for reassurance.

Baymax let Hiro down though, "It is true. You experienced a sudden large amount of pain in your head, cause currently unknown, and lost consciousness for approximately two minutes and seventeen seconds."

There was no reaction from Hiro for a moment, just wide eyes that slowly dropped into a blank, somewhat confused expression. Honey Lemon gnawed on her lip a bit in worry, and then reached forward to put a hand to Hiro's shoulder. His shoulder was shaking. "Hiro?" Honey asked in concern, with Wasabi leaning over her shoulder, looking extremely worried for Hiro as well.

Hiro blinked, breathed again, and shrugged Honey Lemon's hand away. She could see the walls of desperate strength and dark shutters coming down in Hiro's eyes. "I'm fine." He said in his 'leader voice,' leaving no room for argument. He tried to stand again, this time managing to not sway or experience any other kind of pain that needed immediate attention, though there _was_ a dull lingering throb in his temples. Hiro reached out and pressed a hand against Baymax's arm to steady himself, even though he was resolute that he was fine and could stand on his own, just in case. He opened his mouth to-

Fred rocketed onto the scene then, surpassing the lip of the roof and blasting fire through the air behind him to propel himself upwards. Gogo was clinging to his blue suited back, looking very much like any other method of transportation would have been preferred, and she abandoned ship almost immediately once the roof was in sight and close enough to land safely on if she jumped. She hit the ground and rolled, coming up sliding on her discs, and was almost instantly at Hiro's side. Fred soon was there as well, and Hiro dragged both his hands down his face.

"You guys, I'm fine, really. I'm probably just extra tired and fell asleep for a second or something." Hiro groaned, in protest to the sudden mother-henning he found being attempted in their own unique ways by his team.

"Hiro." Gogo said, serious, eyes dark, "You _screamed." _

"And Baymax _just _said you experienced pain." Wasabi pointed out. Hiro groaned again.

A shiver passed through him then, starting from his ankles and crawling its way to his shoulders. Hiro felt his head throb painfully with the motion, but as Hiro suddenly became aware again of the crisp air around him, he couldn't stop. "Can we please have this conversation somewhere not on top of a building please?" Hiro grumbled, crossing his arms as best he could with his huge gloves on. He would not take them off though, not when it was this cold so high up in the air and not when he'd possibly be mounting Baymax again to leave soon.

The team had other ideas though, "You're not getting back on Baymax's back. Not till we've figured out the reason for your little scream and fall act." Gogo said, like a stern but concerned older sister who demanded obedience and respect with every shake of her finger close to Hiro's face.

Hiro's expression deadpanned, "Alright. How am I gonna get down then? How'm I gonna get back to Fred's house?" Fred's house, due to its size as well as the fact that Fred's parents were hardly ever around, had become the team's unofficial base when they weren't working on their tech or suits. For tech and suit work, they went to the Hamada garage or to the lab at SFIT, but other times, when they all were planning, giving patrol reports, or just hanging out in general, Fred was more than happy to host them all in his large house that would have otherwise been empty aside from him and the staff. The emptiness and echo of the hallways of the Lee mansion explained easily Fred's eagerness to hang out at SFIT with the rest of the team while they worked on their projects and his classes had long since been over. So now, it was one of their two bases, and everyone was alright with that.

Gogo, in response to Hiro's question, pointed to small door to the side, there for roof maintenance purposes. Hiro's mouth fell open.

"You're going to make me take the stairs?" He said, incredulously, "Heroes don't take the _stairs_!" He gestured with his hands at the metal door, as if it had personally offended him, his arms jerking towards it and then coming back to flit about before him as he continued to speak, "And if anything, if I fall unconscious walking down them, it'd be worse than if I've got my hands and feet magnetized to Baymax's back." Nevermind the fact that Hiro was feeling fine now, and was one hundred percent sure that whatever had torn through his head had just been some fluke made of radio static that had shocked him. He was not going to let his team make him go down the stairs, through the building while wearing his super suit, and then out the front door onto the hustle and bustle of 2 a.m. San Fransokyo main street.

Gogo looked frustrated at Hiro's mutiny, but eventually conceded, with the rest of the team's eyes on her, "Fine, but you better make sure those magnets stay stuck if you do pass out again, alright?"

Hiro rolled his eyes, "Yes, alright. Not like it's gonna happen again." He turned then, reaching out to Honey Lemon for his purple and red streaked flight helmet.

Static, once more, yelled into Hiro's ears, and Hiro pitched backwards. Honey Lemon dropped his helmet in favor of reaching forwards quickly, her thin hands moving just fast enough to grab onto his shoulders and keep him somewhat upright even as his legs became useless beneath him. Hiro's eyes were open, wide and almost shocked, staring blankly toward the sky. He was reacting and looking like he'd been electrocuted.

"Hiro? _Hiro?!" _

"Honey, lower him down, quickl-"

"I don't think he's breathing! _Baymax-_"

"What the hell is going on-"

"C'mon Hiro, _breathe_."

Hiro breathed again, harshly, coughing a bit as his lungs and his gaze snapped back to focus. His right hand immediately went to his still buzzing head, the huge glove burying itself as much as it could into his mess of thick black hair. He coughed again, and looked at the faces of each of his friends in turn. "I…" He swallowed thickly, and returned his gaze to the sky above him. He could see no stars due to the light pollution of the city that surrounded them all. "Alright, so maybe, maybe I'm a little bit not fine. But only a little bit." His shoulders shook, and the night was cold, the roof of the building on his back was even colder, and he-

Suddenly, Baymax's arms, unarmored, pulled Hiro up from his lying down position and into a half-soft half-hard hug. The healthcare companion's armor was still worn on its torso, but, likely when Hiro had collapsed in Honey Lemon's arms, someone had taken the armor off of Baymax's arms in hope that he might've been better able to better help Hiro that way. Hiro's shoulders still shook with the aftershock of his episode, but he melted into Baymax's arms gratefully, always able to find comfort in the soft white vinyl of his friend's arms.

"There, there." Baymax spoke, "We will help you Hiro."

The rest of the team all nodded, though Hiro could not see them do so, his face pressed against the blue metal on Baymax's stomach as it was. "Yeah, we're gonna fix ya up. I'm sure it's nothing Baymax can't handle." Wasabi said, voice holding a reassuring level of confidence in it that had Hiro twisting in Baymax's arms and smiling tiredly at his friends.

"Thanks guys." Hiro said, "Yeah, I bet it's an easy fix. Then I'll be right back up and able to fly around on your back without worry, bud." He patted Baymax's arm with one gloved hand. Baymax said nothing, and Hiro turned back to face his friends, his brow furrowed, "I wonder what it is though. I mean, I haven't experienced anything like this before."

"It came out of nowhere too. You've been fine up until now." Honey said, looking a bit shaken.

"Yeah! Then suddenly one minute you're up, and the next, you're falling like you just took a huge electric punch!" Fred added.

Hiro bit his lip, and didn't feel any shame when he burrowed himself a bit more into Baymax's arms. His head was buzzing again, temples throbbing a lot more than they had been after his first black out. "Hah, a huge electric punch huh?" He said, and Fred grinned, reaching out to ruffle Hiro's hair comfortingly. But instead, Hiro winced away, and the entire team went back to looking tense and wary.

After a few moments of silence, Gogo spoke, her electromag discs rolling as she worked her legs anxiously. Though she had been tired - on the point of dropping with exhaustion - before, now, her blood was pumping fast through her body from the panic that had swept through her when she'd heard Hiro scream through their comm link. "Come on, lets get off this building and somewhere warm."

At this, Hiro stretched a grin across his face, "Warmth would be really great right now. I agree."

As soon as Hiro said that, Fred launched into a pose, pulling the top of his monster suit over his head as he did so, "Then away, Big Heroes! Awaaaaay!"

Hiro laughed, and though there hadn't been any crime - no matter what Fred said of jinxes and the night still being young - the team counted it as a small victory. They'd be needing all the victories they could get their hands on after all, in the upcoming days as they worked to determine what had caused Hiro so much sudden, mysterious pain in his head.

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong>


	2. Upsurge

**AN: Oh gosh, thanks so much for the awesome response to the first chapter! I'm glad it got a few of you readers' attention enough for you to click the follow or favorite button. As much as I'd like to and said I'd take this story slow, sometimes I can't help/predict how fast I write or how hard a certain chapter will punch me in the face. So, here is chapter 2, just to get you all hooked on this a little bit more ;) **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 2 - Upsurge: to surge up, increase, rise<p>

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><p>"What are you doing here?"<p>

Hiro yelped and spun around, hands already rising into half of a defense position and half of an offense position. The result was less than intimidating, and made Hiro, with his thin limbs and short stature already working against him, look sloppy and vulnerable rather than like he'd been taught karate by his master of an older brother. Tadashi had always strived to match the forms and stances while practicing karate, and had come out of those lessons certified and able to take on the world. He had tried to teach Hiro - who had been too young and too scatterbrained to join Tadashi's dojo at the primary time that Tadashi had been learning - a few moves, but Hiro had only manage to pick up a few basic defensive stances and nothing more than the fact that karate was _totally cool! _

It showed now, in the way Wasabi didn't look scared at all, and barely batted an eye when Hiro's hands cut through the air close to him.

"Oh! Wasabi!" Hiro said, dropping his hands, a nervous smile stretching his face and his voice coming out in a guilty twitter. The team, after Hiro had experienced three more blackouts in the week after the worrisome experience with the first one - thankfully, none of the blackouts had been as close together or intense as the first two episodes - had risen up in mutiny against Hiro and confined him to his room for his own safety. Professors had been emailed, and Hiro's extended absence was explained in the body of the message as depending on whenever Hiro was able to defeat the sudden "illness" that had taken hold of him. All of the professors had been entirely understanding, if a bit more lenient than they normally would have been to a sick student, due to Hiro's age. No one wanted to discourage such a young genius mind with so much potential from learning, and no one wanted to be cruel to the boy whose brother had died on campus at the hand of another professor. So many of the professors were very indulgent of Hiro. They were all generally fine with Hiro missing classes, and were confident the young genius would be able to make up the work, so the team had nothing stopping them from instructing Baymax to not let Hiro out of his room. Which, as Wasabi looked down at Hiro's guilty expression, had obviously not worked.

Hiro took a step back from Wasabi, toward his work desk in his little private lab, "Ahah, didn't expect to see… you here... yeah. I just…" Hiro's smile froze a bit, and for one worrisome moment his eyes went blank. Wasabi tensed, ready to catch the younger boy in case he experienced a blackout, but thankfully, Hiro snapped back to awareness a moment later. He blinked around his small lab space, which had previously been Tadashi's. "I… actually have no idea why I'm here. I think I was looking for something, but yknow, now I don't remember." Hiro frowned and dug a hand through his messy black hair, looking a bit disoriented to Wasabi, who was quickly growing worried.

"Well hey, lets get you back to Aunt Cass, you can remember what you needed when you're back at 100% alright? No use trying to figure stuff out when your brain's all fried." Wasabi said, crouching just a bit to meet Hiro's eyes, feeling like an older brother even though he had always been an only child. He could feel it in the air, the tense atmosphere that meant a blackout episode of Hiro's was coming, and was growing increasingly worried the more upset and confused Hiro's expression became. "How'd you even get away from Baymax huh?" Wasabi murmured, brow furrowed. Hiro pouted at the question, spoken by Wasabi as if he was addressing a child, and opened his mouth to retort with something snarky about how he escaped. But then- he remembered, or rather, didn't remember.

Both of Hiro's hands, shaking, were now buried in his hair. "I don't remember?" He asked more than said, face crumbling as he sifted through his memories and came up with nothing but ash. Wasabi bit his lip, and tugged out his phone to call the rest of the team.

Hiro's hand spun out, and he smacked the phone away from Wasabi's grip.

"Wh- Hiro!" Wasabi yelped, yanking his hand away and close to his chest, eyes wide. Hiro's eyes were wide as well, focused on the phone which had slid across the floor and now rested up against the door to the lab.

Then, Hiro's eyes squinted, and Wasabi forgot his phone and made himself ready again to catch Hiro. But Hiro turned, and stared at the technology by his deskside, and stared at the still unpacked boxes of his own work coming in that sat alongside boxes of Tadashi's work going out. He dove on one of his own boxes like an animal.

Wasabi breathed out, thankful that Hiro hadn't had an episode, but still worried and confused beyond belief. He chanced a glance at his phone, and inched towards it, but Hiro wasn't paying attention anyways. The young Hamada was tearing through the box before him, tossing metal and battlebot pieces and tech aside like they were nothing, his hands shaking and growing a bit frantic. Wasabi gulped. He really needed the rest of the team and Baymax. Wherever Baymax was. Hopefully Hiro hadn't locked the healthcare companion in a closet or something to get away.

That was another odd thing, that Hiro would dare to separate himself from Baymax for so long, especially after the bot had just been rebuilt since the Silent Sparrow incident that had torn them apart seemingly forever.

Wasabi, eyes still on Hiro's back, picked up his phone and instead of attempting to call everyone, scrolled himself straight to the group text they all had set up. '_Hiro at SFIT. Acting weird. Help!' _He hit send, and then realized that the jumbled sounds of things being thrown from the box had stopped.

Hiro held a Megabot prototype in his hands, the imperfect magnetic bearing servos having been shoved into the box to go to Hiro's lab at SFIT by accident. He eyed it oddly, face a bit shadowed, and Wasabi tried to approach slowly.

"Hey, Hiro." Wasabi said, not liking the way Hiro was twisting the servos with his fingers. He didn't seem to be himself. This was an entirely new development in Hiro's condition since that frightening night when he'd watched Hiro pitch backwards off of Baymax's back, and Wasabi definitely had no idea how to handle it. Approaching slowly seemed to be the best option at the moment. Perhaps if he could get Hiro to lie down or direct his attention elsewhere, then perhaps a blackout could be avoided, and then he and the team could work on getting Hiro back to his room at home. Their house arrest measures would have to be stepped way up, and then they would have to work harder and faster to figure out what was affecting their friend-

Hiro took the two ends of the prototype into his hands, and pulled viciously until it separated with a great metallic _snap. _

Wasabi yelped and jumped back a bit, as Hiro merely tossed the now useless pieces over his shoulder. He went back to rooting through the box, thin arms swallowed up to his elbows by the cardboard sides.

"Hey Wasabi, where are my microbots?" Hiro asked, voice wavering in the air a bit but otherwise as casual as could be, as if he hadn't smacked Wasabi's phone away and hadn't been panicking earlier about not remembering how he'd gotten past Baymax.

Wasabi, shocked at the unexpected mention of the microbots, which Hiro _knew _had been sucked into the portal, floundered for an answer for one moment too long. In his open mouthed silence, Hiro's arms stilled and he slid sideways to collapse down to the floor.

"Oooohh no nonono." Wasabi shot forward and caught Hiro against his arms similarly to how Baymax had while in mid-air the first time this had happened. Wasabi, instead of moving Hiro to a safe space immediately like Baymax had though, stood there spluttering for a bit with Hiro's body slumped against his, looking at all the mess that Hiro had created before he'd succumbed to unconsciousness.

And why, why on earth, had Hiro asked about his microbots? What had prompted the question?

Keeping Hiro's back to his chest, Wasabi pulled his phone out again and, ignoring all the responses in the group chat to his text, called Gogo. She was the fastest of them all, and would likely run a few red lights - Wasabi internally cringed. Road laws existed for a _reason_ - getting to the SFIT campus, but she'd be level headed enough to keep Wasabi focused as they figured out what to do with Hiro.

Gogo didn't pick up, "_Hello, you've reached the number of Leiko Ethel Tanaka, thanks for calling, and if you leave a message, I'll-" _Wasabi hung up before Gogo's answering machine could finish speaking, and looked at the group text before deciding who to call next, if anyone. Having to prioritize his friends was not something Wasabi enjoyed doing, and it was extremely stressful.

_GG: oh thats just great. little sneak._

_GG: on my way_

_HL: I'm on campus rn actually! b thr soon! Is Baymax w/ u and him? _

_FrEdZiLlA: _- Fred had managed to get a hold of Wasabi's phone one day, and had entered his own name into Wasabi's contact for him. Wasabi didn't have the heart to change it - _Weird? Weird is my middle name! At SFU rn tho. Be there for u dudes later ;P tell Hiro I said he can use my throne of awesome for chillaxing if he needs it_

Wasabi sighed in relief. Two out of three was better than nothing, which was what Wasabi had been dreading at this time of day.

He fired back a quick response: _Thanks! No Baymax. He got away from him somehow? Just blacked out again. Wary to let him rest on Fred's chair. Could be diseases in there._

_GG: you type too much _

_GG: so many words_

Wasabi rolled his eyes at the quick response from Gogo. Wait, but if she was on her way - She was texting while riding her bike probably. How she managed to do that at such high speeds on such a small vehicle would always be a mystery, but oh Wasabi was so gonna get on her for that.

_HL: OnO;; again? oh no. maybe we shd take him 2 a doctor? Dnt know what this is. might be stress? chem imbalance? vry worried. :'(_

_FrEdZiLlA: my chair is perfectly sanitary puhhleeeez. you disinfect it like twice a week wasabi. just lay hiro there let the lil fella be comfy_

With those responses, Wasabi shoved his phone into his pocket, hefted Hiro up into his arms a bit more, and moved to leave the Hamada lab space. He had to nudge the door open with his foot, and his shoulder activated the transparent-opaque-transparent walls near to the door at least twice, but he eventually managed his way through. The door at the end of the hallway though, opposite the elevator on the other end, that led to the main lab where the rest of the team's workspaces were, was another story. Wasabi dreaded setting Hiro down - just looking at his young pinched face was enough to make his heart clench a little - so instead, he compromised. Shifting Hiro from both arms to having him flopped over his shoulder a little was a struggle, but Wasabi eventually managed it, and opened the doors into the main lab. Hiro began to stir then, groaning and rubbing his face against the shoulder of Wasabi's sweater, and Wasabi hustled as fast as he could through the door and over to Fred's chair. He was thankful the lab was empty for the night. Wasabi honestly didn't know what he'd do if there had been other students there to see him carrying a fourteen year old like a sack of potatoes across the room, only to dump him a bit spastically face first onto the _infamous Fred_'s lounge chair.

Hiro found himself coming back to consciousness with a face full of fabric and chair fluff.

"pBbth- What?!" Hiro yelped, pushing himself with his arms away from the cushions of Fred's chair, head turning rapidly as he realized he was no longer in his lab. Wasabi was standing beside the chair, looking both apologetic and concerned, and Hiro groaned, letting his arms give out and sending himself face-planting back into the chair. "It happened again di'n't it." Hiro mumbled against the fabric. The dull buzz in his head was enough to confirm his statement.

"I'm afraid so." Wasabi answered, reaching forward to ruffle Hiro's hair. Everyone seemed to enjoy doing that. Hiro didn't understand why, but he certainly wasn't complaining. It made him feel like he had an older sibling again whenever one of the team would do it.

"Ugh." Hiro moaned, "I want this to stoooop." And his chest ached, because he was worried and scared for himself too just like the rest of the team was, and Tadashi would have known what to do.

The main doors to the "nerd lab" opened then, Honey Lemon and Gogo coming in together, both looking a bit disheveled, as if they had hurried so fast from wherever they had been that they had collided along the way.

"Oh, you're awake, Hiro!" Honey Lemon said, smiling in relief as she spotted Hiro, who still had his face squished against Fred's chair, but one eye was visible as he watched the two girls enter. Honey and Gogo began to make their way over to the chair then, but Wasabi quickly cut them off, sliding in front of them and halting their path forward, his hands held out placatingly before him.

"Ah, ok, we gotta talk real quick first." Gogo could see Hiro's suspicious pout just out of the corner of her eye around Wasabi's arm. "We'll be right back Hiro!" And then Wasabi herded the two over toward the doors he had just moments ago struggled through with Hiro. The hallway beyond was quiet, though there was probably one student or two in their own personal labs working away, but neither Wasabi nor Gogo nor Honey Lemon were concerned with that right now.

"Wasabi, what's going on?" Honey Lemon asked, Gogo still and silent beside her. Gogo would offer her words when they were necessary, and she knew they weren't necessary at the moment.

Wasabi's shoulders slumped as he relayed a bit of what had happened when he'd found Hiro in his lab, "Right before he blacked out this time he was acting really weird. Searching through his stuff, not remembering things." Wasabi raised his eyes to meet those of his teammates, "And then he asked where his microbots were."

Honey sucked in a sharp breath, and Gogo's gum popped loudly. "And then, after that, he just passed out?" Gogo asked.

Wasabi nodded.

They heard Hiro's voice from the lab then before their conversation could continue, muffled by the metal of the door, but it was Hiro's voice none the less.

"We're going to get to the bottom of this." Honey said quickly with a determined line in her shoulders, clenching her fists around her purse strap, before the three of them quickly went back into the main lab.

Hiro had repositioned himself in the chair, now he was sitting with his knees drawn to his chest, feet on the cushion, and his phone held to his ear. He held up a finger as Honey, Wasabi, and Gogo walked in, listening intently to whatever the person on the other end of the call was saying. His expression was grim though.

"Alright… I guess we'll…" Hiro rubbed a shaking hand down his face. His limbs had been increasingly trembling more, as if he were cold all the time, ever since his blackout episodes had begun. "I guess we'll see him. Tomorrow? Thats-" Hiro swallowed painfully, "That's really soon, but o-okay." He smiled weakly at his team, and offered them a thumbs up, "Love you too Aunt Cass."

Hiro hung up then, and before Wasabi or Gogo or Honey Lemon could voice their concerns about his well-being or about what Aunt Cass had said or about what had just happened in his lab, Hiro said, "There's something wrong with…" He shook his head, and backtracked, "The prison called Aunt Cass. Said that there's…" He struggled for a bit with his words, his small hands looking like they wanted to wring someone's neck and yet also hug someone, "There's something… wrong with Callaghan. And he's been... " Hiro looked away from his friends, down at his knees, "He's been asking to see us."

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong>


	3. Deteriorate

**AN: kinda unhappy with how I ended this chapter, but overall I'm chill with the body of it, and that's what really matters tbh ;P Another round of thank you's once again to everyone's kind words so early on in this story, especially since I'm working on building the plot gradually (but hey, if u leave a guest review, I cant respond to it since I respond via PM. but pls know that im reading those reviews and smiling a whole ton) I'm glad you're enjoying things, now hang on tight, cause the ride only gets bumpier from here on out. School and irl stuff might slow down updates or review responses for awhile, and so I am saying sorry in advance now just in case that happens. In the past I've always managed to find time to write or do things (coughwhileprocrastinatingcough) even with my workload, so hopefully this story wont get bogged down too much. Now, without further ado, I give you chapter 3**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6 **

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 3 - Deteriorate: to make or become worse or inferior in character, quality, value, etc. to disintegrate or wear away.<p>

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><p>Hiro definitely did not want to be there. The cold gray walls of the prison were not where he belonged, Tadashi had taught him that. Now they only brought back memories of him sitting in one empty cell in the police station, while Tadashi glared at him across the hall from the cell that was packed to the brim with botfighters and petty criminals whom Tadashi pressed himself as close to the bars as possible trying to avoid.<p>

Becoming a hero for San Fransokyo had effectively displaced Hiro from anything that might have led him down the path to these cold prison walls, and he was grateful.

What he was _not _grateful for, however, was Baymax not being allowed within the building.

"Woman up." Gogo said, lightly punching Hiro on the arm as they walked down the hallway, led by a prison guard who looked like he needed more sleep. "Baymax will still be outside when we get back. Stop pouting."

"I'm not pouting." Hiro said, hunching his shoulders a bit, shaking hands shoved in his pockets. He liked hiding them from view so that he could pretend he was alright, and that there wasn't something unknown within him causing him to shake and black out.

"You are pouting a little bit." Wasabi teased from behind him.

"I'm not!" Hiro answered back.

"Aw guys, leave him alone. He's tense." Honey chimed in, trying to not sound like she was tense herself, which she was. They all were tense and full of dread in that moment.

Hiro felt a thick slab of deja vu roll over him at Honey's words, and stubbornly hunched his shoulders a bit more and buried his face further into his scarf. It was almost winter after all, and Hiro liked scarves and hoodies like Tadashi liked hats - which was surprising to people for some reason. In the warmer - but still chill - months, Hiro would wear only hoodies or jackets with thick hoods to satisfy the scarf need, but in winter, the scarves were there keeping him warm every day and no one could stop him. Summer in San Fransokyo was a whole different story though, in which Hiro wore t-shirts and Tadashi had been unable to put his signature cardigan on, much less wear a hat, without sweating. Hiro smiled a bit at the memory, but then the guard leading the group of friends coughed a bit, as he turned his head and eyed the group oddly. They all suddenly were reminded of where they were.

"Robert Callaghan is just up ahead. This visit couldn't have been done in the visitor's room. We had to move him someplace special." The guard informed them, voice gruff and low as he quickly slurred the last thing he said. Hiro scrunched his nose a bit. The poor man _definitely _needed more sleep.

"Someplace special?" Honey Lemon asked, having always been attentive and strong in her observation skills, and willing to bring the things she heard or saw to light. "Why?"

The guard huffed, "Just wait till you see him, kid. You'll know."

"Well that was helpful." Gogo muttered a bit bitterly. The guard glared at her, but said nothing more, as he began to slow when they approached the end of the hall. Fingering the electric card clipped to his belt, the man finally stopped before a dark grey sliding door.

"Here he is." The guard said, swiping his card across the electronic lock, allowing it to beep with authorization before he reached to slide the door aside. The group went inside, and the guard said to them, "Have fun." Before he slid the door shut a moment later.

The room was small, with an obvious camera in one corner and a large one way mirror across the wall that Callaghan was facing. It was an interrogation room. There was a metal table, a chair that Callaghan was sitting in, and two chairs on the other side of the table for detectives or officers or visitors. No one wanted to move at first, the door having been on Callaghan's right side. Their old professor had not yet seemed to have noticed them, his eyes shut, his haggard and pale face tensed and pinched, looking like stone. Old, once caring hands were curled into claws and cuffed tightly with chains to the table before him. Overall, Robert Callaghan looked to be more of a ghost than he had been when they thought him dead.

Honey Lemon was the first to break the stupor that had fallen over the group at the first look of their old Professor, and she step forwarded. "Callaghan." She said, a bit unsure of how to address him now that he was no longer their teacher or friend. Callaghan's head jerked at her voice, and his eyes met hers. They were twitching wildly though, unable to focus on Honey's face, and she gasped at the startling sight, but plowed bravely on with her words. "We're here, as you asked."

Honey then walked over to stand before the table, and sat down in one of the two chairs provided. The rest of the team followed her lead, Hiro the last to do so.

"Yes, yes…" Callaghan said, seemingly to himself, gaze unfocusing for one horrifying moment. Wasabi felt a sickening twist in his gut as he was reminded of the other day, when Hiro's gaze had done the same. "As I asked? Yes. Right. I did ask to see you all, didn't I."

Hiro stood at the back of the group, and his lips twisted as he stared at the man he had once idolized. Gogo noticed Hiro's expression, and quickly turned to Callaghan, trying to speed the confrontation along to spare Hiro - and all of them - any more pain. She slapped her hand on the tabletop, dropped down into the seat beside Honey as Callaghan flinched at the sound her flesh made on the metal, and leaned in, "So tell us why we're here then. We didn't come just for you to ramble the whole time."

Callaghan stared at Gogo, and stared, and stared. His eyes did not twitch even once as he kept his gaze on her frustrated expression. He leaned back in his chair, the once straight and sturdy line of his back curving and hunching as he continued to focus upon Gogo.

"Oh." Callaghan said suddenly, an odd quality of conflict to his voice, as if he were both coming to an epiphany and facing the end of the world. "Oh, you don't have them."

Gogo frowned in confusion, but Hiro seemed to suddenly want to be involved. He stepped forwards, having heard something in Callaghan's words and seen something in the despair in his expression that seemed to echo within himself. "Have what?" He asked, his "leader voice" once again making an appearance. Though this time, it was genuine. Hiro was demanding an answer of someone who was beneath him, who he could have dropped to the level of and yet rose above. God forbid Callaghan not answer to the leader of the Big Heroes.

Callaghan's gaze snapped, very quickly, from Gogo's face to Hiro's. His eyes focused upon the younger Hamada's face, flickering ever so slightly unlike how they had stayed so very still when he'd been looking at Gogo. Callaghan took in Hiro's jawline, the curve of this nose, the slant of his eyes, and blurted out, "Tadashi?"

Hiro stepped back, expression like shattered glass. "What-?"

Callaghan tried to stand then, but his hands were still cuffed to the table, and they held him back as he began to shake and splutter, "Tadashi, _Tadashi_, where are your brother's microbots? Where are they?"

Gogo and Honey had also stood from their seats, and they slid into a neat blockade between Hiro and Callaghan, both feeling their own brand of calm fury. Fred and Wasabi were by Hiro's side almost immediately, both standing just behind Honey Lemon and Gogo, all together creating a protective formation as Callaghan became more frenzied.

"You don't understand, I _need_ those microbots Tadashi!" Callaghan's volume began to rise, and his cuffed hands began to shake. Hiro felt his own hands shaking against the insides of his coat pockets. Wasabi grabbed his shoulder. Fred bumped their arms together. His eyes began to unfocus. Something broke.

"I'm _not_ Tadashi. I'm _Hiro._" Hiro said.

Callaghan became still almost immediately.

"But… you don't have them."

Hiro's chest felt hot. He pushed away from Wasabi and Fred's comforting presences and squeezed his way through the Honey Gogo wall. "What? The microbots?" Hiro asked, bitterly. "They're _gone. _Sucked away into your portal."

Callaghan's eyes were wide, and they bugged out of his head a bit, as if this information was entirely new to him and completely _devastating_. He fell back into sitting in his chair, slumping in hopelessness before abruptly straightening his posture again, excitedly saying "You can make more! You can, can't you? Hiro. Tadashi's brother. The genius. You can-"

"I will _never_ make any more."

Callaghan lunged from his seat, and very nearly overturned the table trying to claw at Hiro. His hands fell short, but hooked into Hiro's scarf, and Callaghan pulled the boy forwards with one quick choking jerk.

"_Hey, stop!" _

"_Let go of him!"_

Hiro had frozen, his face so very very close to Robert Callaghan's. Up even closer, the man looked so much more different than he had before the showcase fire. He looked deranged, like he was falling apart at the seams. "I _need_ those microbots, Hiro." Callaghan growled lowly, but also sounding desperate and frantic, a bit of spit flying into Hiro's face. Callaghan's hands and arms and shoulders were being pulled at by the rest of the team, trying to get his iron grip off of Hiro's scarf, and someone was pulling on Hiro's back. But they all sounded to Hiro as if he were hearing them through water, while Callaghan's voice was crisp, clear, and appealing to the buzz that was building up inside his head. "I _need _them. I will _die _without them."

Hiro felt like screaming, and his temples throbbed with pain and static.

It was that very moment that the guards and authorities burst into the room and managed to do what the rest of the team had not - which was to pry Callaghan away from Hiro. The faceless figures in uniforms wrestled the criminal back, jerking his arms against the chains and cuffs. Callaghan began to yell unintelligibly, still reaching for Hiro, who had fallen backwards and was pulled into Honey Lemon's arms the moment his scarf had been released and he could breathe again. Fred was at his back, one hand pressed between Hiro's shoulderblades in comfort as the boy shuddered and choked on the phantom of what had just happened.

"What the _hell _kind of response time was that?!" Gogo raged at one of the guards who wasn't busy wrenching Callaghan out of the room. "The moment he stood up you should have been-"

"Ma'am, please remain calm. We are-"

"Oh no, you did not just call her ma'am." Wasabi muttered, shaking his head and looking pityingly at the man who had done the deed. He stood at Gogo's side, effectively acting as a barrier and midpoint from Callaghan to the huddled Hiro Honey Fred group.

"You should get that _murderer," _Gogo pointed sharply at the door to the room, from which Callaghan had finally disappeared, dragged away to wherever he was going. "A therapist, or a psychiatrist, or _some kind of help. _He's obviously not alright. And then, you tell him to never, ever,"

"Ever!" Fred chimed in. Hiro snickered a bit at that, and Honey Lemon gave Fred a thumbs up behind the younger boy's back.

"-_Ever _request to see us, or Hiro, again."

They left the prison halls with pounding feet and the shared resolution to never go back, not for anything. Baymax was just outside the gate, waiting patiently just as Hiro knew and Gogo had said he would. He was standing tall beside a uniformed man who kept eyeing the large and white balloon body of the healthcare companion with wariness, and Hiro wasted no time rushing to his friend and pulling Baymax away from the holstered gun and sharp badge.

"How did meeting with Robert Callaghan go?" Baymax asked, blinking his eyes gently, head tilted towards Hiro in attention as the rest of the team caught up to them and walked up slowly. Hiro shook his head, and reached out one hand to grip what of Baymax's arm he could tightly.

"It didn't go well." Hiro said, rubbing his thumb on Baymax's soft material, while looking at the ground. "I'm just… confused. I guess." Hiro looked back up at his team then, with that look on his face that meant he was thinking extremely intently about something, but coming up with no solutions. "Why would he ask about the microbots? He knew they were gone."

Wasabi paled, remembering when Hiro had done the same exact thing, and Gogo and Honey Lemon tried not to look at their green sweater wearing friend. Fred filled the silence and distracted Hiro from the other three of the group by saying, "It sounded like he was having some memory problems." He shrugged, "So its probably no big dealeo that he asked about them."

Hiro nodded slowly at that, remembering with a painful tightness in his chest how the ex-professor had called him Tadashi at first. He swiped at his eyes quickly, and shrugged in Fred's direction with what he hoped was an easy smile. In reality, it was more of a weak grimace that was almost on its way to being a smile, but Fred didn't mention that and just grinned reassuringly back as Hiro said, "Yeah, you're right."

"I believe a warm meal at the cafe as well as a distraction, such as video games, might relieve the stress you all are feeling." Baymax said, holding his hand up in the way he did whenever he imparted knowledge or advice upon his patients.

But Hiro shook his head. "Nah, no. I'd much rather go flying honestly." He said with a sigh, "But you all aren't gonna allow that." He gestured to the team with his arms.

Wasabi and Honey Lemon still looked as if they were trying to hide something, but Gogo was as chill as could be, and she stepped forwards to poke at Hiro's forehead, "Now you're catching on." Hiro winced, and rubbed his fist across his brow once Gogo had stepped back, "C'mon. Let's get out of here already, and take Baymax's advice too. Some brain melting video games might be good for us all right now."

"If we play Mario Kart though, you know I'm gonna choose Rainbow Road." Fred teased.

"If you choose Rainbow Road. I will end you."

"See! You get just as invested as the rest of us! You've got no right calling those games brain melting."

They would do their best to destress and forget in that moment, but some very intense hero discussions about what had occurred at the prison with Callaghan would definitely be had. Afterall, it still nagged at Hiro how far the professor had fallen, and what could possibly be causing him to lose his mind in such a way. Wasabi, Honey Lemon, Gogo, and Fred all watched Hiro carefully as they noticed the boy fall back into his thoughts while they walked. Baymax waddled on beside his friend and patient, quiet.

That afternoon, Gogo kicked everyone's butts in Mario Kart, even Fred's. At least until Hiro picked up a controller. For a moment, it was almost like everything was alright, but then Hiro fell unconscious in the middle of a race. They had to pause the game for Wasabi to tuck him into one of Fred's large beanbag chairs and for Honey Lemon to call Aunt Cass to let her know that Hiro would be home soon. And to please make sure he got enough to eat that night, and to please not ask how the visit with Callaghan went.

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><p><strong>Please review! Please Please Please!<strong>


	4. Percuss

**AN: had a bit of trouble thinking of a good word to title this chapter :/ (but hey yoooo in reviews- if you readers think of any cool word while you're reading, be it a 'normal' word or something that sounds really dictionary-esque, you can definitely let me know! It'll help me get my own word ideas churning for other chapter titles and I might just take your suggestion too!) Thanks again and again and again to all the reviews. some of those guest reviews i really wanna reply to but ughhghght. i cannot. just know that i see ur words and am thumbs-upping so hard when i do. and hey, I hope you all like this chapter :) (omg- these author notes r getting redundant. i just never know what to say in these things so i end up repeating things a lot from other ANs. ah well. *shrug* cant be helped i guess. the story is the important part anyways. Author notes rly dont maaaatter)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 4 - Percuss: to strike (something) so as to shake or cause a shock to.<p>

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><p>"Are we going to have to lock him out of his garage and his lab? Is that what this is coming to?"<p>

Wasabi shook his head in response to Gogo's question, pacing the floor in front of the group minus Hiro and Baymax. "Maybe, I dunno! He'd kill us if we try to cut him off but-"

"But this is the second time he's asked about the microbots and torn through his stuff." Honey finished for Wasabi, repeating what he had told the gang and that which prompted their informal meeting, as she sighed and sunk down into her chair a bit more. They were all gathered at Honey and Gogo's small apartment, as Fred's house was too obvious for Hiro to look for them at, the Lucky Cat was absolutely not an option, and neither was SFIT. Hiro had never been to Honey and Gogo's place, and thus, would never find them if they decided to discus the next steps they would be taking to figure out the mystery of what was plaguing him. Honey Lemon was in a small but comfortable chair beside her bed, Gogo and Fred were on the bed, and Wasabi was carving a circle into the ground in front of the bed with his feet as he paced.

"What has Baymax been saying on his diagnosis?" Gogo asked, "I know he said the first time that Hiro's blackout and the pain he felt had no immediately discernible cause, but surely after all this time he's got to have something?"

Fred shook his head, "Nah. Baymax has got nothing. I've been asking him every now and then. He just keeps repeating either that he can't find the cause, or something is interfering with his scanner whenever he tries on Hiro."

"He was so confused when he woke up and everything was torn apart." Wasabi groaned, still pacing. "And he sounded just like Callaghan when he asked for the microbots, yelling about _needing_ them. I dunno about you guys, but that's a pretty big red flag right there. I mean, the first time he asked, ok, coulda forgotten about it. But after seeing Callaghan, no, nope, no way that its a random thing." Wasabi's voice was strained by the time he had finished speaking.

Fred gasped, "Maybe the portal messed with their heads!" He suggested dramatically.

"Callaghan didn't go into the portal," Gogo answered, and hesitated to mention their Professor's daughter, "and Abigail was in there for over a year and she's completely fine, if you discount the muscle dystrophy and other complications from being in hypersleep that long." she finished, quickly shooting down Fred's first theory.

Fred quickly came back with a second theory, "Alright okay, well then what if Callaghan did something to Hiro! And it backfired on him too?"

Honey Lemon put her hand on Gogo's arm, and interrupted Gogo before Gogo could shoot that down too. Wasabi still paced in the background as she said, "That actually kind of holds water," She said, "Since both their symptoms and behavior seem to be congruent. But Callaghan _definitely _is in a worse shape than Hiro."

"And we're not gonna let Hiro get to Callaghan's point!" Wasabi added in, _still _pacing.

"Will you stop walking in circles?" Gogo snapped. Honey kept her hand on Gogo's arm to try and keep her calm. It only slightly worked.

"It helps me think!"

"Think in another room then!"

Wasabi kept pacing right in front of them.

Gogo huffed, and turned back to face Honey Lemon, gesturing with her hands slightly as she posed the next question, "Alright, but why is Callaghan so badly off when Hiro's just now beginning to decline? He looked like he'd been that way for awhile. Maybe as soon as since he'd entered prison. The guards put him in a special interrogation room with cuffs and knew how to deal with him and everything."

"Callaghan probably, when it backfired or something, got a larger dose of whatever's makin them both crazy! It acted faster on him then cause of that." Fred answered, smiling as he believed they had cracked the mystery.

Gogo sighed and stood from the bed, holding her hands out, "Alright, it's all well and good that we've got a theory, but how are we going to go about fixing this mess if it _is _something Callaghan did? And why can't Baymax pick up on it if it's that simple?" The group could tell by Gogo's tone that she was doubtful of Callaghan's involvement, after all, the man had had no time nor reason to try and send Hiro to madness, too focused on his own revenge plot and then too busy being in jail to put any sort of plan into action. There was something they all were missing, one of those things that, at the moment, was a mystery, but once they connected the dots it would seem foolish that they hadn't considered it before.

Fred pouted, and flopped back onto the now empty bed, conquering the space fully as his own. "Alright, okay, those _are_ some pretty big plot holes." He conceded.

"Freddie, we aren't in a comic book-" Honey tried to say, before her phone began to ring.

Honey stood up from her chair, pulling her pink fox case clad phone from her bag as she did so. She didn't want to be obnoxious and force the rest of her friends to listen to whatever conversation would be had, and so moved toward the door while at the same time hitting the answer button with one hand - without looking at the name of the caller - and waving at her friends to continue talking with the other. "Hello?" And then Honey stopped walking, "Oh, Hiro, hi!"

Wasabi, Gogo, and Fred instantly were attentive. Wasabi quickly pushed Honey back away from the door and towards the bed, and Honey sat down with the phone to her ear. Hiro's voice was a muffled mumble to the rest of them, but putting him on speaker had too many risks.

"Is there crime somewhere we've gotta take care of?" Honey asked, as Fred slid himself up the bed and squished in close to Honey Lemon, pressing the side of his head to the back of her phone and causing Honey to lean due to his weight.

"Fred." Wasabi hissed, but Honey waved her hand at Wasabi to keep him quiet, and Fred shot his friend a winning grin before he tried again to hear whatever Hiro was saying. Gogo stood by, quietly, her expression serious.

"Hiro, you know I don't have a car." Honey Lemon answered to whatever Hiro had said. "Why didn't you call Wasabi if you and Baymax need a ride?"

"_I think… I think Wasabi's been avoiding me, to be honest. And Gogo would just have her bike and that can't fit Baymax. And I don't even know if Fred _can _drive. I had hoped that you'd have a car but, I mean, Baymax and I can always take the bus or the trolley or walk or-" _

"Hiro, where are you?" Honey said, cutting Hiro off with a grounding question before he could launch himself into a panic, as the build up in his voice was leading to it.

Hiro paused, mumbled something to Baymax away from the phone, and then answered, "_Please don't tell the rest of the team, okay Honey? Please, they'll just worry more about me and I'm pretty sure either Wasabi or Gogo are about ready to lock me out of my lab anyways cause of all this mess going on and my blackouts and I really don't need you all to be worried about me because I'm fine and-"_ Honey pressed her lips together guiltily, and shot her friends a look, feeling her heart sink more as Hiro rambled on. Their expressions mirrored hers, and Fred's face was set in a frown from where he was pressed to her side. Finally Hiro answered the initial question, "_I'm at the ruins of the Krei Tech building that Callaghan destroyed." _His voice wobbled, cracking where he tried to be strong, "_And I don't know how I got here." _

Honey stood up immediately, dislodging Fred and causing the boy to flop down into the empty space she had just vacated. "I'll borrow Wasabi's car and be right there, I'm sure he won't mind as long as I don't put a single scratch on it." Honey joked to Hiro, while simultaneously making a pleading face Wasabi's direction, as her larger friend gestured silently and mouthed _What?! _back at her. "Just stay with Baymax okay."

"_I'm fine. I'll be fine. I mean, I'm an ex-bot fighter aren't I?"_ Hiro said, chuckling desperately, "_I just need a ride home Honey. I'm not in any danger at all. Seriously, have a little more faith."_

Honey snorted, "Why do you think I told you to stay with Baymax? If there's no danger, you'll make some." Gogo grinned a bit at that, and Honey grinned victoriously as Hiro really did laugh. His laugh was dry though, the laugh of someone sick, and that put a damper on her victory only slightly. "But yeah, I'll be _right there_!" Then, before she could say more, Hiro hung up.

"'As long as I don't put a single scratch on it'?" Wasabi blurted as Honey blinked at her phone screen, which was flashing with the words _CALL ENDED. _Honey looked at her friend and shrugged sheepishly. "I don't really act like that about my car, do I?"

"Ever since your old one sunk to the bottom of the bay, yeah." Gogo said. Wasabi spluttered a bit, and Gogo turned to Honey Lemon, "We're going with you to get Hiro, okay?"

But Honey Lemon, surprisingly, shook her head in disagreement, "No, he asked me not to tell you guys. You can follow and be secretive, but I have to show up there 'alone.'" She said, complete with long fingered air quotes around the word _alone_.

Gogo crossed her arms, but Fred was quick to launch himself off of the bed and enthusiastically say, "Covert ops, nice! We can definitely be stealthy." He struck a few amusing ninja-esque poses for emphasis. "It'll be like we're not even there."

"Good, sounds like a plan" Honey said, and then, she grinned widely and held her hand out to Wasabi.

Wasabi sighed, a long suffering sigh, and dug through his pockets for his keys, "... not one scratch, okay?" He grumbled, dropping the keys into Honey's hand. Gogo smirked as Honey and Fred laughed, while Wasabi's face went slightly red.

When Honey Lemon pulled up to the area outside the destroyed Krei Tech building - which was roped off with caution tape and construction cones, as the building was slowly being built back up - it was easy to spot with the car's bright headlight Baymax with Hiro sitting next to him. They were on the concrete stairs which had led into the rounded grassy area before the main building, and Hiro was leaning against Baymax's side, looking down into something he had cupped in his hands. He looked up like a startled animal the moment the car's headlights fell upon him, and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. He wasn't wearing his hoodie jacket, or his scarf, or much of anything really, and shivered as he stood with a hand held over his eyes against the light aimed at him. Honey quickly shut the car off, got out, and tried not to glance around her for any sign of her friends being nearby.

Hiro tugged Baymax up into a standing position, and began to push the robot towards the car, head down as if he were trying to avoid having any kind of conversation with Honey, hoping to just get in the car and be off. Honey wasn't going to let him off that easy though, and she gently intercepted Hiro and Baymax's path to put a hand on Hiro's shoulder.

"Hey, what's going on? Don't push us away, Hiro." Honey said, repeating her words from that night at the docks that now seemed so very long ago.

"Hiro is experiencing a lot of stress right now." Baymax chimed in.

Hiro shrugged, and pushed one hand into his pocket, fingering whatever was in there. Honey frowned as she noticed.

"What's in your pocket?" She asked, and Hiro stiffened. "Hiro?"

"It's nothing. Can you just take me home please?" Hiro asked, looking up at Honey pleadingly, using the dreaded _puppy eyes _against her. Honey Lemon had heard many times from Tadashi - often as Tadashi banged his head on his desk, lamenting over his weak will - of the effect the infamous Hiro Hamada puppy eyes could have, and she, who possibly had even stronger puppy eyes, was not phased.

"We're all trying to help you Hiro, and so we need to know anything you're feeling and anything that goes on." She put her other hand on his other shoulder, and looked into her young friend's eyes. "I agreed to not tell the rest about tonight, but that means you owe me." She smiled gently, in a very sisterly way, and Hiro had to look away.

His shoulders shaking, Hiro slowly tugged his hand from his pocket, and opened his clenched fist. A few microbots tumbled out of his palm like grains of sand falling away, but the rest remained, a handful of glittering black standing out in the darkness against Hiro's pale skin. Both his pockets looked like they still held many more than what was just in Hiro's hand as well.

"Found them. In the wreckage. Don't know why I'm keeping them." Hiro muttered, eyes glassy and locked upon the small pieces of tech in his hands. "There are still more in there too. They didn't all get sucked into the portal." Honey kept her hands steady against Hiro's shoulders, her eyes wide and horrified as she watched Hiro slip without warning into the state that thus far, only Wasabi had seen the two other times it had happened. He began to jerk in her grip, shoulders pulling, back bouncing against Baymax's belly which was working with Honey Lemon's hands to keep Hiro in place. "There are more." Hiro breathed in sharply, as if just realizing the fact of what he was saying, "There are _more._ I have to get them all out, I have to-"

Honey gasped as Hiro dropped the microbots to the ground, and desperately hoped that one of her suited up friends would step in soon. Hiro would be angry that she hadn't come alone, but if it stopped him from hurting himself- "Hiro, calm down! You don't have to get them all out, okay?"

"Honey there are _more _and I _need_ them!"

Without a neurocranial transmitter in sight, the microbots that rested upon the ground and the microbots that were in Hiro's pockets surged forwards to slam themselves against Honey's abdomen.

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><p><strong>Pllleeeeaaaassseee review!<strong>


	5. Labefaction

**AN: aaaahhhhh oh no my chapters are getting shorter and taking longer. We're going to be getting to the good stuff soon though, but I guess I should have expected some slow moments when I decided to try and do a slow building plot leading up to the action instead of just tossing into the action or close to the action and explaining it a bit later like I am normally prone to do. But! I gotta discipline myself to write even the parts that aren't too exciting! and to explain an entire story! YeaH! *punches the air - falls over - flops on the ground* ye a ahhh!**

**Also, sorry Cori (and I think 1 other person who reviewed) I had to delete your review because you actually guessed correctly at a huge part o my plot. Looking at it now, this plot point _is_ getting more obvious with each chapter I write, but I still didn't want other readers to see ur review and know! high five to you though, and sorry I had to delete the review!**

**And thank you to the guest who offered a few new words for me to use as chapter titles! :D im gonna be using one o those right now**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 5 - Labefaction: a shaking or weakening; overthrow or downfall.<p>

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><p>Though there were only a few microbots, and they were barely able to throw her back, but they still packed a punch. Honey gasped at the impact, hands falling away from Hiro's shoulders to clutch at her definitely bruised stomach.<p>

"Urk-!" She gasped, as the microbots immediately retracted, moving to twist their few numbers around Hiro's ankles, shifting and curling in their form as if they were alive. Even when Callaghan had been in control of the microbots, with the neurotransmitter and mask upon his face, the microbots had never moved so organically. Their form, while under his control, had been jagged and sharp, all useless veins of straight lines and chaotic bursts. But now, they moved like water, dripping their way up to wind around the youngest member of the Big Hero 6.

Then, Gogo was speeding into the way, cutting off Honey's view of Hiro and Baymax. Yellow clad hands went to Honey's arms, and Gogo's voice filled her ears, "Honey, are you alright?" Honey nodded, before trying to peer around Gogo's shoulders to see Hiro, putting her own sore stomach from her mind in favor of making sure Hiro was okay. Gogo turned to follow Honey's gaze, her eyes widening behind her helmet's darkly tinted glass, and she instantly had one disc slid from her back to her arm, ready to throw.

Baymax had acted quickly when Gogo had slid in, scooping Hiro into his arms and holding the now limp boy to his chest while making soothing sounds to his patient. Hiro had gone frighteningly still, head turned down, and yet the microbots took a few more moments after he was unconscious before they too slowed and slowly fell apart, uncontrolled and useless once more. They dropped from his shoes and ankles and plunked against the ground, looking innocent as they glittered in the fading light of the cold evening.

"Microbots?" Gogo breathed, eyes widening in confusion and shock, just as Wasabi and Fred emerged from either side of the darkness to come assist their friends. Wasabi heard Gogo's gasp and moved a bit faster, not even hesitating before reaching the microbots and making as if to sweep them out of the way from where they were rolling at Baymax's feet.

"Hey. I need those." Hiro breathed, startling everyone, as they thought he had fallen unconscious. His voice did not tremble though, and his hands were not shaking, he merely hung in Baymax's grip and tilted his head until he could look at all his friends just as calm and normal as could be. Gogo slid back towards the still curled and sore Honey Lemon, and Wasabi had frozen with one green gloved hand outstretched towards the bots. Fred was standing to the side a bit. And Hiro watched them all. "Give 'em to me, Wasabi. I'll keep 'em safe and stuff. Can't have any bad guys getting their hands on the extras, right?" Hiro said, even as Baymax's arms did not release him, his normal hand gestures that he made while talking muted against the white vinyl confines. "We should get all the microbots out from the wreckage and construction."

Wasabi shook his head, "Nah… I don't think these things are good for you right now lil buddy." He said, now completely sure that the microbots had something to do with Hiro's condition. Fred's theory of Callaghan doing something was completely in the trash now, though the connection between Hiro and Callaghan was still a mystery. Wasabi reached out again and this time did scoop a few of the bots into his hand, and Hiro's face lit up angrily.

"Stop it!" Hiro yelled, jerking just a bit in Baymax's hold, the trembles that the team had come to expect of him finally showing themselves in the way his shoulders hitched and jittered. It was as if he'd been fighting them, acting his way through the trembles, and now they took full reign. "I made those microbots, they're mine!"

The team was conflicted, because on one hand, Hiro was completely coherent and speaking normally, not babbling with stuttered words about his need for the bots like he had for a moment with Honey Lemon and like Callaghan had when they had spoken with the old professor. But on the other hand, Hiro obviously wasn't in his right mind. There was something about the microbots that was causing him to crave them almost obsessively.

Like an addict in an unhealthy withdrawal. Came the thought to Gogo, and for a moment, a piece of the situation slid into place. There were still shadows covering most of the details, but at least for the moment, they knew the microbots were the common factor and likely the cause of all the mess they all had found themselves in, not to mention Hiro's blackouts as well as his odd episodes such as the one they all were witnessing.

"Wasabi." Gogo hissed, acting on her realization. "Get the microbots away from him, alright. Baymax, can you keep holding Hiro like that?"

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here!"

"Yes." Baymax answered, "I can continue to restrain Hiro, as it is currently in both his best interest and in yours that I do so."

"Baymax!"

Then, Wasabi began to frantically push the microbots towards him. There were just enough for him to cup them in both hands and against his chest slightly without one falling. Hiro kicked against Baymax's arms.

"Give those to me! Wasabi! Gogo! I need them! Honey, Fred, c'mon. Don't just stand by and let them do this!" Hiro protested. "Give them to me!"

Gogo slid forward on her wheels a bit, and met Hiro's eyes. While her gaze was steady and unmovable, Hiro's eyes were twitching, very slightly, but just enough to provide a haunting glimpse into what Callaghan's eyes must've been acting like before he fully succumbed to whatever was affecting them both. Hiro looked away after a moment, focusing back on the microbots and pushing his hands against Baymax's arms.

"No."

Hiro fell quiet, his eyes wide, and they slid very frighteningly until they were focused completely upon Gogo's face. "Oh." He said, his tone of voice an echo of Callaghan's "Oh, you don't have them." As if her usefulness had drained from her because she had no microbots to give. "Oh." Hiro repeated again. Then Wasabi yelped from behind Gogo, loud enough to have her spinning around.

Fred was pulling with his monster claws upon the string of microbots which were dancing and shifting around Wasabi's hands, looping themselves up his arm. Wasabi yelped again as the microbots squeezed.

"Hiro please!" Honey Lemon shouted, arms still wrapped around her stomach.

Hiro ignored her, but the microbots fell still against Wasabi's arm. "You guys don't understand." Hiro groaned, rolling his eyes. "You really don't."

Gogo jumped on the chance to distract the deteriorating child before her, "No, we don't. Could you give us an explanation?"

Hiro shrugged. "Nah. I don't really want to." And before any of them could react, even Gogo, the fastest of them all, Hiro said, "Baymax, I am satisfied with my care."

It was the first time that Baymax had been deactivated since being rebuilt, after his first body was lost to the endless voice beyond the Silent Sparrow's threshold, and Hiro didn't even seem phased. For many long weeks Hiro had never once dared to even speak anything similar to the deactivating phrase, and had confessed to his friends his nightmares of saying those words and seeing Baymax, and everyone, abandon him. For them to watch Hiro do so now, obviously not in his right mind, and say that he was satisfied with his care, created an atmosphere of dual parts dread and horror almost like something out of the Twilight Zone.

Baymax's arms dropped, and Hiro slid down until his feet touched the ground once more. The small amount of microbots that were moving on their own immediately fled from Wasabi's arm so that they could curl around Hiro's ankles. Gogo didn't dare to move as the thin line of tech hissed its way beneath her wheels on their way to their creator. Baymax stepped away, and, without his charging case to fold up into, simply shut his eyes.

Hiro smiled. "Now I have to find the rest of them." He whispered, his voice once again on the cusp of that stream-of-consciousness-esque babble. "Have to get them out. Thanks. Thank you for giving them to me."

"We didn't give them to you though." Honey said with a shake of her head. Hiro shrugged again.

"Doesn't matter. Doesn't. Just need them."

Gogo took a chance then, and tossed one disc of gold directly for Hiro's head.

"Gogo!" She heard Honey scream, but it was too late to take it back. The disc rocketed through the air towards the boy she thought of as a sibling, and she ignored the pounding in her chest as she watched it fly. If it struck true, Hiro would be unconscious - another mystery was that he hadn't yet blacked out. Perhaps the proximity to the microbots was doing something to keep him from dropping like a stone like he had all the other times - and if it didn't, then she'd just have to try again.

The disc was knocked from its course by a thin, one microbot thick line striking upwards and hitting it's flat surface just before it had the chance to even graze Hiro's ear. Hiro turned to face Gogo then, as the disc spun lopsidedly in the air and clattered against the ground, and his expression positively crumbled.

He took in a large gasping breath, staggered backwards, and tripped a bit as his arm hit Baymax's side. He turned to his healthcare companion, and began to breathe even faster when he noticed that Baymax was deactivated. Hiro's episode looked to the rest of the team like it was finally coming to a close, and Wasabi - the most accustomed to Hiro's lucid and microbot craving moments - braced himself to move quickly in case Hiro pitched abruptly to the side, unconscious.

But Hiro did not fall unconscious. Instead, he spun around, ducked beneath a line of caution tape marking the perimeter of the Krei Tech construction zone, and ran from his friends as fast as he could. The microbots still clung to his heels, shifting like a small swarm of bees on Hiro's skin.

"Hey!" Fred was the first to shout after Hiro, "Hiro come back!" He pulled the head of his monster suit on and began to bound after the boy, leaving Wasabi behind to stand by Honey as Gogo was quick to follow as well. Honey's stomach still ached from the short ranged impact of the microbots against her gut, but-

"Go help!" Honey instructed Wasabi, standing tall despite the throbbing pain. It was dying down. She would be fine.

Wasabi blinked at her, "Are you su-"

"Yeah I'm sure!"

And he didn't need telling twice. Wasabi raced off into the construction zone to help find Hiro, leaving Honey to wait by the car, the only one suitless and slightly injured. So Honey Lemon had basically a front row seat, standing there by the car, when a huge piece of the new construction suddenly caved inwards and collapsed. She needn't have worried though, as moments later her three team members emerged from the rubble, unharmed if coughing a little bit on the cement dust kicked up by the collapse of the construction. They approached the car slowly though, almost guiltily, and Honey Lemon was filled with dread.

Fred flipped the back of his monster suit head back to say, "We didn't catch Hiro."

It was suddenly the worst thing in the world, for Hiro to not be there. Having Hiro with them, whether he was acting out and endangering them during a fit or not, was better than having him out in the world without even Baymax. When they had been able to keep an eye on him, they could have taken precautions to keep him safe and fight the episodes he kept having. Locking down HIro's lab and garage seemed to be the next logical step, but no, his condition had escalated in such a dramatic and sudden way that none of them expected, that they had been unable to keep a hold on him to enact any next steps.

"What...?" Honey Lemon trailed off into a useless question, and gestured with her arms a bit in the cold, dark air between them all.

No one answered Honey immediately, but, "Ow." Gogo tossed to the side quickly.

Baymax blinked back to life almost immediately, not needing to inflate upon activation that time, and his head shifted on his large body as he examined each member of the team in turn. "What seems to be the trouble? I am detecting no serious injuries except for a bruise upon Honey Lemon's abdomen." Baymax looked and blinked a bit more, and then said, "Where is Hiro?"

Gogo sighed, Wasabi looked away, Honey shook her head, and Fred shrugged. Gogo popped off her helmet then, and turned to the healthcare companion. "We're gonna need you to suit up, alright marshmallow?" She knocked her fist against Baymax's soft stomach. "Cause we're going on a Hiro hunt."

They only hoped that they got to Hiro in time and that he was alright. He had been wearing nothing aside from his shirt and pants, and the wind coming in on the winter season was going to be freezing that night.

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><p><strong>Please reviewwww!<strong>


	6. Rupture

**AN: PLEASE READ THIS: by now im sure a lot of you readers have noticed that this fic is definitely going down a _very dark path._ it's going to be a lot _more serious and dark and gritty than a lot of other Big Hero 6 fanfictions,_ and a lot more serious and dark than you expect right now. This chapter is where things are going to begin to turn. I hope I don't lose any of you, but also _I don't want you to stay if you are uncomfortable with where this is going or get triggered by the things I'm going to be writing into this story_. I always write very angsty things it seems. It's just a quirk of mine. Everything I try to write. all the time. whether i start out with fluff or not. someone always ends up getting murdered. I think I'm cursed.**

**My next Big Hero 6 fic I've got plans to be a lot lighter and with a lot lot lot less blood, but for now this is how this story is going, and I hope you all are still interested. Thank you to all who have reviewed and stuck by me thus far! **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**WARNING: a death and some blood**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 6 - Rupture: the state of being broken or burst.<p>

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><p>He didn't know where he was, or how he'd gotten there.<p>

Hiro shivered, rubbing his hands along his arms again, hunching his shoulders against the bay wind as it ripped down the dark alley way. The microbots that clung to his legs had grown in number, as when he had ran through the ruins of the old Krei Tech building the ones that had been salvageable had rolled to him like he was a giant magnet.

Hiro was scared, and he was rarely ever scared. _You're an ex-bot fighter. You're a superhero. You're Hiro Hamada! _He kept telling himself. But Hiro didn't know why the microbots were moving and acting without a neurocranial transmitter, and he didn't know why his memory was blank from the moment he had hung up on Honey Lemon until now, when he was lost on the edge of San Fransokyo. His phone wasn't in his pocket. Baymax wasn't with him. The only things he had were the shoes on his feet and the technology his brother had been killed for.

An old, thin cat leaped from the dumpster he'd been trudging past and meowed loudly at him. In response, Hiro startled, and the microbots jabbed jerkily out from his feet at the cat's paws, sending the poor animal hissing and scrambling away. Hiro stared at the microbots as they slithered back to him, then looked away and kept walking. His gaze was focused forwards, and his eyes were cloudy.

If he just kept looking straight ahead then he wouldn't have to see the shadows shifting at his feet.

The next day, twenty-four hours later, Cass Hamada filed a missing persons report for her sole remaining nephew. Hiro Hamada had been last seen leaving the house in what Cass had described - from her place sitting in front of the television, only throwing a glance over her shoulder fast enough to see Hiro going down the stairs - in a sort of half-asleep daze, wearing only a thin t-shirt and a pair of dark jeans despite the wintery temperature. Baymax had been with him though, and so when Hiro hadn't responded to Cass calling his name and asking him where he was going, she assumed he would be alright even if he was only wearing a t-shirt. Hiro would never take Baymax to a bot fight, so she didn't have to worry about him going to one of those, and had been getting oddly secretive lately. So Cass had brushed the incident off as a symptom of puberty and went back to watching her show with Mochi curled warmly in her lap.

But Hiro hadn't come home like she'd expected, and then - _Tadashi's old friends _- Hiro's new friends had been knocking on the cafe door long before opening time.

"He's a fast kid, and he ran before we could catch him." Gogo had told Aunt Cass, speaking gently as Fred led the older woman to sit down in a chair. And sit down Aunt Cass had, her eyes wide, as her mind swirled with all the possible things that could be happening to her boy.

"What should I- What can I-" She usually babbled when worried, but that was when she knew her boys were secure. Now, she felt useless and at a loss for what to do, and the same black pit inside of her that had opened when Tadashi had died was slowly digging itself back into her chest.

"File a missing persons report." Honey said, moving forward to sit next to Aunt Cass on the small chair and take her hand into her own, comforting Cass with her closeness. "We'll keep looking for him while you do, but it's good to have the police be on the look out too."

The police, in the end, were the ones to find Hiro.

Two of them, faceless and nameless to Hiro, saw him walking down the street toward the docks another day after he had been reported missing. Scruffy hair and pale shivering arms and red shirt all matching the description. His eyes were open, and deep purple crescents were stamped beneath each one, a testament to the lack of sleep he had had while wandering the streets in constant limbo between moments he wouldn't remember and moments he would. The microbots hissing at his feet also kept him awake. Startling nightmares of bright color and pulsing static in his ears coming to him any moment he tried to sleep, jolting him into awareness only to hear the click and clatter of the tiny bots rolling adoringly against his skin as if he were their mother. Hiro could not understand how they were still working, nor understood how he could possibly stop them, and so gave up trying to. He focused instead on trying to find his way out of the maze that was San Fransokyo's back alley ways and back to his friends, but every moment he would experience the boughts of amnesia that Baymax had mentioned, he would open his eyes afterwards to find himself completely turned around and in unfamiliar territory once again.

So now, Hiro trudged toward the docks, following the warehouses and smell of the water. The docks would provide him with a control point, and act as a place to return to if he got lost again. He did not expect to be intercepted on his way there by a cop car turning on its lights and rolling toward him.

Hiro froze, just as the car scrunched its way to a stop on top of the gravel road outside the warehouse Hiro suddenly found himself cornered against. The driver's side door opened first, and then the passenger side, and then the two policemen were approaching Hiro slowly.

"Hey, are you Hiro Hamada?"

Sound roared dully in Hiro's ears, and he barely heard the question. He nodded after taking a moment to decipher the sounds that he heard and match them with words.

"Your friends and family have been real worried about you kid." The policeman that had come from the driver's side said, stopping a few feet from Hiro and crouching slowly down to Hiro's level after noticing how cold and shaken the child before him looked. "How about we get you home?"

Hiro remembered, vividly, the police officer at the station whom he had gone to after his and Baymax's first encounter with Callaghan and the stolen microbots. He remembered how the man hadn't believed him, how he had tried to get Hiro to write his name down, to put his name on a paper to be put in a file and later pulled up and seen that hey Hiro Hamada was caught at a bot fight we _cannot trust this kid_. The authorities did not trust him, so Hiro, suddenly, with a sharp flash of cold in his chest and head, decided not to trust them in turn.

The microbots lashed out, one thick spike shooting forward and catching the crouching officer on the arm. The man yelled and tumbled backward, his other hand moving to clutch at the bleeding gash that had been made by the sharp edge of the spike. The other, still standing, officer whipped his gun out almost immediately, but held it pointing at the ground away from Hiro, his eyes flickering between his partner and the thin scared child they were trying to help.

Slowly, the spike retracted, the microbots oozing back to Hiro's feet once more. The officer that was on the ground stared with wide eyes, and slowly pulled back his hand from his wound. There was blood, of course there was, but he obviously hadn't expected for there to be so _much. _

His partner, with their gun still in their one hand, let go with the other and reached for their communicator. "We've found the missing kid, Hiro Hamada." He spoke quietly into it, watching as Hiro's eyes slid to focus on him. The gaze was twitchy, and Hiro's pale face and dark hair with those eyes made him look almost scarily like some sort of _yurei._ "He looks shaken up, and is acting hostile."

Another spike lashed out, this one thinner and able to reach further, and it skewered the communicator and the policeman's hand that held the device straight through.

The man screamed in pain, and Hiro jumped and screamed also. The other officer, the one with just a scratch on his arm, stood up quickly and made a move to pull his gun from its holster as well. But the microbots were faster than any human, and they fed off of Hiro's shock and fear so that they could move. They pulled themselves with a jerk from the communicator, and left a bleeding hole behind in the one officer's hand. The bots then snaked out to grasp the other officer's wrist, and they tugged the man forward sharply into another large spike that loomed up in front of Hiro out from the darkness.

The Big Hero 6, minus one member, arrived on the scene later, having followed Hiro's readings from Baymax's scanner all the way there. They did not find Hiro there though, and instead found one dead officer prone upon the gravel ground, and another with a bleeding hand desperately fumbling at his partner's neck and wrists for a pulse.

"Looks like we've got a new villain in town." Gogo whispered, looking away from the dead man as Wasabi pulled the other officer away. "Just means we have to find Hiro sooner."

Honey looked ill. "Yeah, we can't…" She stared at the hole in the man's chest, and then looked away like Gogo had. "We can't let this guy hurt Hiro." Hiro had just been in the area as well. Hiro had been so close to whatever horribly twisted person had been there.

"Who did this, did you see his face? Height? What type of weapon did he use?" Fred was questioning the surviving officer, his voice muffled through his monster suit, but his natural _Fred _voice, which was honestly rather soothing whenever he was trying to be serious, was welcomed by the officer.

"The kid. The missing one." The officer said as Baymax, in his large and intimidating red suit, wrapped his hand with some bandages found in the first aid kit in the police car. "Small, black hair, Japanese-American." The man shook his head and pulled his eyebrows together as he tried to remember the boy's name, not yet noticing or able to see through the tinted masks the way the team's faces all paled as one. "Hiro Hamada, that's the kid."

"There's no way Hiro did this." Blurted the Hero in pink disbelievingly.

The officer frowned at her, eyes sad, red rimmed, and she took a step back. "I'll know his face for the rest of my life. He killed my-" The man swallowed, and shook his head again, "No. No I don't think he meant it."

"What do you mean by that?" Gogo asked.

So the officer elaborated. "He looked disoriented, and a bit scared. And I didn't see a weapon either. There were just these weird black shapes that came outta nowhere and-" He clenched his one good hand, the fingers of his other hand twitching against Baymax's armor. "We couldn't fight it. I don't think Hiro could either."

"Your hand has been properly disinfected and bandaged." Baymax said, his soft robotic voice breaking the crisp cold air and shattering the dark, tense thoughts of whatever anyone was going to say next. "With the proper care to rebandage and disinfect constantly, your hand should heal with only minimal muscle damage. Please take care not to overexert it before its time though, as you run a very high risk of losing function even if you do not."

The officer blinked and looked at his hand, and then looked at Baymax, and Wasabi coughed a bit. "Yeah, this guy here is a real medical genius ain't he." The green Hero said in reference to Baymax. He then changed the subject. "We'll call an ambulance and some more of the police force for you."

The officer turned and glanced only once at his dead partner before Gogo smoothly slid in his way. It came from her own experience that letting someone grieving look at the person they were grieving over never led to anything good - for Hiro, there was always a tremble of his lips, a sucked in breath, and then he would not sleep for days or would only sleep for days. For herself, there was a gaping Tadashi shaped spot in her heart beside the rest of the places she held her friends, and angry fast spinning wheels.

With a tremble of his shoulders, the officer, obviously new and unused to dealing with such situations, slumped forward a bit, surrendering himself to the help of the Big Heroes. "Thank you." He would have nightmares for a long time of shadows piercing cruelly through his stomach.

Each member of the team nodded, but were far too sick with concern for Hiro to say much else or do much more than call the authorities, wait until they arrived, and then leave to keep looking for their little brother. They had not been directly involved with the events that had led to the one officer's sudden death, and so had not been required to remain at the scene except for to give a quick statement of what they had arrived to see and what they had done afterwards, which wasn't much. The entire team was restless as a uniformed woman with a badge and a voice recorder recorded each of their words quickly in turn, since they had secret identities to keep and could not be called down to the station to give official reports. Then, they left in colored blurs, faster than anyone amongst the flashing blue and red lights and white medical vans could be prepared for.

On Baymax's next scan, Hiro showed up not too far from where the death had occurred, his signal coming from the very edge of the San Fransokyo docks.

There was silence, and then Wasabi said, testingly, hesitantly, "Should we think of a plan?"

Gogo frowned and shrugged. "It's Hiro. I mean, I'd like to think he wouldn't hurt us."

"But he's… not in his right mind right now." Honey continued, building off of Gogo's statement.

"Yeah, a plan definitely seems like a good plan." Fred added.

"I am concerned for Hiro, and will follow any procedure that will retrieve him safely so that we may help him." Baymax said.

So while the team planned quickly, trying to figure out a way to proceed and get to Hiro before Hiro moved, Hiro sat on the edge of the docks. His feet were kicking in the air over the dark water of the bay below him in a mockery of childish innocence, and he rolled a blood covered microbot between his fingers, picking the red from the black metal with shaking fingers and choked back sobs. He could no longer feel the winter air, nor cared that the wood he sat on was wet and freezing over into ice through the fabric of his pants.

"Tadashi." Hiro whimpered, "I'm really sorry."

Hiro knew now that he was never going to do great things. He was never going to make his brother proud. Not after this night. Not after any of this. Tadashi's memory would be forever marred now. Tadashi would no longer be remembered as the brave man who had ran into a fire to save someone else, and who had wanted to change the world for the better. No, now he would be remembered as the dead brother of the messed up monster kid who murdered a cop in the middle of the night.

One by one, whenever Hiro finished scratching all the red from a microbot, he dropped it down into the water below him. He hoped they stayed there at the bottom of the bay, and ignored the way the shaking of his hands intensified the more microbots he let fall away from him.

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><p><strong>Please review! <strong>


	7. Withdrawal

**AN: things will be picking up again with this story soon! the plot right now is kind of in that slow transition period from the build up to the meat of the story, but yeah, things are definitely gonna be picking up. :) thank you all for sticking with me, and just as an FYI, I will do warnings like I did for the previous chapter in any chapter that contains a death, blood, gore, or any type of material that might possibly be any kind of triggering. There aren't going to be really any more deaths though aside from vague ones maybe later on. the death of the cop was just a kind of catalyst and also to show how little control Hiro really has over the microbots, and its effect on Hiro will be seen (and exploited *evil laugh*) later in the story.**

**BUT OH HEY- PLEASE GO READ "Betwixt the Blackout Curtain" Its a whoLE TON LESS DARK THAN THIS FIC. HAS A WHOLE TON OF TADASHI IN IT. WAS WRITTEN MAINLY BY A FRIEND OF MINE (WITH A BIT OF MY INPUT HERE AND THERE) AND IS GONNA BE SOOOOOO GOOD. I'D REALLY APPRECIATE IT IF SOME OF YOU MORE USUAL/FREQUENT READERS COULD GO CHECK IT OUT, MAYBE DROP A REVIEW. YEAH YEAH. THANK YOU! **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 7 - Withdrawal: removal, retraction<p>

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><p>"Hi guys." Hiro whispered, voice cracking, as he heard the footfalls of his friends behind him. No, no. He didn't have the right to call them friends now, not after what he had done. He also had a vague feeling at the back of his mind that he had done something else before hurting the officers as well, but could not remember it, only feeling a ghost of hands on his shoulders and hearing the echo of a gasp. It was more likely than not that he had definitely done something.<p>

No one said anything in response to his greeting, so Hiro, with his back to them and his feet - no longer kicking - hanging over the water, continued talking slowly. "My head's a bit clearer now. I threw most of the microbots into the water." He raised a trembling hand and pointed out into the darkness. "And I think I figured it out."

Still, no one said anything, but Hiro could hear through the faint static in his head the footsteps against the wooden dock as they all continued to approach. He just kept talking through, even as they came closer and closer, "I'm pretty sure it was the neurocranial transmitter." He stared into the rippling waves and fog, "I'm a genius, but not that great. Even with Tadashi's help…" His voice trailed off. Hiro, in that moment, did not want to think of his brother whom he had failed. Those types of thoughts made him feel sick. "It was flawed. Something went wrong. Instead of simply reading levels of brain activity in certain areas, it scrambled _something_ so as to better translate our thoughts to the bots. I'm…"

The microbots that he could not throw without them rolling through the water back to him shifted around his shoulders, and Hiro shivered. The Big Heroes behind him froze at the motion of the dark mass against his neck. "I'm hooked up to the microbots permanently now. It's the only explanation. Callaghan too." He hung his head down then, and dug his fingers through his hair, feeling the thin digits shake and curl into claws against his scalp. "'M gonna be a monster forever." Hiro choked out.

A heavy hand fell on Hiro's shoulder then, and he jumped in shock, the microbots lashing out naturally in response to his jump in heart rate. They slashed forward, and cut a weak, thin line across the chest of Baymax's armor with their now even smaller numbers.

"Hiro, we are only here to help you." The healthcare bot said in its gentle way. "And you are not a monster. I am unable to scan monsters."

Hiro turned his head to look up Baymax's armored stomach. He rubbed at his eyes a bit, replying in a rasp, "It's just an expression, buddy."

But Baymax tilted his head, "I do not believe you called yourself a monster as an expression. It is not good to be cruel to yourself."

Hiro pressed his head against Baymax's hard armor stomach, choking back emotion as he felt the cold metal against his forehead and the cool microbots slithering on his neck. "B-but I killed that-"

Baymax cut Hiro off, for Hiro's own good. "You did not intend to commit such an act, and thus, are not to blame. You were scared."

Hiro slumped his shoulders forward, letting down his guard for only a moment.

He shouldn't have. The rest of the team were still around after all. It wasn't just Hiro and Baymax on the edge of that dock, no matter how much Hiro had felt like it was as he had talked to his friend.

A brightly colored orb dropped from the darkness above Baymax's head, falling down in front of the bot and aiming for the top of Hiro's head. Hiro didn't notice, but the microbots lashed out on their own anyways, doing as much as they could with how little they were in number. They speared themselves through the chem ball, causing the reaction inside to be released. Goo, colored bright pink and blue, bubbled out of either end where the microbots had skewered it, and pretty soon the entire orb had distorted into one large sticky mass. It hung above Hiro's head, suspended on the microbots, just in front of Baymax's face, with some of its goo stuck to the front of Baymax's armor. Hiro's wide brown eyes trembled as he focused on the bright hues of the chemicals.

That had been headed towards his _head. _

Hiro had known, though he could not remember it, that there was a reason he had ran from his friends and gotten lost in the dark coldness of San Fransokyo. He couldn't trust his friends, just as he could not trust the police. Maybe, he couldn't even trust Baymax.

The microbots swung the clump of goo forward, smashing it against Baymax's chest and face and pushing the huge robot to stagger backwards. Hiro lept to his feet and made to run again, the microbots still clinging to his neck and shaking off goo as he moved. Gogo slid in front of Hiro though as he tried to leave, bursting from the darkness to cut off the thin dock's only way out with the yellow lines of her wheels.

"Hiro we're not letting you run again!" Gogo yelled, pressing the button on the side of her helmet to slide the dark visor out of the way and reveal her face. Her hot breath steamed out into the cold air before her in the form of a white cloud, and Hiro noticed then that his breath was doing the same. He couldn't feel the chill on his bare arms though.

"You have to stay away from me!" Hiro yelled in response, the microbots swirling around his neck like a small collar of tentacles. "I could _kill _you!"

"We promised to fix this, buddy." Wasabi called out from someplace further up the dock, where Hiro could not see with his shaking vision. "We promised to fix _you_."

"_Hey!" _

Hiro stopped breathing, his brother's voice filtering through the static in his ears.

"_I'm not giving up on you."_

"Hiro?"

His head hurt. It hurt so much. He wanted his brother to be there. He wanted his friends. But he couldn't trust them. He couldn't. He was a danger to them anyways. He would be. Fine. Perfectly fine.

"_Look for a new angle." _Tadashi whispered to him.

So the microbots punched downwards and broke a huge hole in the wooden dock. Wood and water sprayed upwards with the break, and Hiro fell down into the cold, dark water as Gogo reached for him and Wasabi and Honey Lemon yelled in the distance.

Or at least, he _would _have fallen into the water, had a blue clawed hand not shot out from under the docks and snagged him by the back of his shirt. Hiro choked and gagged as the fabric was pulled tight around his neck, shaking the microbots and causing a few to continue down to the water. Fred grunted with effort as he hefted Hiro back up through the hole in the dock, tossing the thin - thinner than before - boy up and causing him to slide across the wet wood to a halt right at Gogo's feet.

For a moment, Hiro laid there, dazed and groaning, unaware of the team as they approached him cautiously. His body was sore and cold from all the running and the lack of care he had had the past few days, and trying to run now was almost certain to end in failure.

"_Think your way out!"_

The microbots that he had left hissed and curled around his neck, like an animal trying to protect their master. They continued to do so even long after the static screaming behind Hiro's ears had crescendoed, and Hiro's eyes had slipped shut as another thick, heavy black out washed over him.

That same heavy blackness was something that Robert Callaghan was used to. The blackouts were frequent, long lasting, and terribly painful for him, and in the moments when he wasn't unconscious, he was scratching at the walls and asking for the Hamadas.

"Where are they- where- I need them. Don't they understand?" Callaghan murmured, his arms shaking, his eyes twitching. "I need Hiro. I need them. The microbots. I need them. Where are they?"

"Hey. Shut up in there." A guard grunted through the door, the special door that kept Callaghan locked inside his room, safe from the other prisoners, and the other prisoners safe from him.

"I'll shut up when you _give them to me_!" Callaghan yelled back, voice a rasp, still conscious enough in that moment to respond _somewhat _lucidly to the world around him. "Give me the microbots, give me the Hamadas, give me them give them to me!"

The guard outside breathed a deep, long suffering sigh, and likely rolled his eyes. "The Hamadas, and extended friends, have requested you not contact them anymore."

Callaghan moved himself towards the door, slumping and clawing as he went, "But Hiro needs to make more Hiro needs to give me the microbots I will die without them."

The guard's tone of voice sneered at Callaghan, "Yeah, well, unless you can get out of this prison, th-"

With a choking sound and a terrible thud, the guard's voice cut off. Callaghan held his breath, fingers twitching against the metal of the door, and watched fixatedly as the handle slowly turned.

"Getting out of prison is not as hard as most believe." Said a deep voice, and the door slowly opened. Unfortunately, it opened just as Robert Callaghan succumbed to a blackout, one of the worst. So with the loud scream of the microbot's distance echoing in his mind, he did not get to see the face of whomever was taking him away from the prison and back out into the world, where he could and would be far more dangerous.

On the other side of the city, Hiro Hamada opened his eyes and screamed until he was gasping for breath. The room around him was unfamiliar, and the absence of the microbots which he had had close to him for _days _was felt keenly just as if he'd lost a limb. Nevermind that he himself had tried to rid himself of the microbots. That had been a bad idea and plan, thought up by a delusional child who had not yet seen how hopeless distancing himself from the bots was.

"Help! Help me!" Hiro yelled, throwing himself up from the bed he had been lying in and tossing himself against the wall. It looked like he was in a guest bedroom of some sort, the walls a nice neutral print, the furniture and floor bare. He banged his fists against the wooden door before him, shaking the walls as his mind screamed for him to reach through and search for the microbots that he _knew _were out there. Hiro had deteriorated so very fast, and now he understood what Callaghan had meant when the old professor had dragged Hiro's face close to his and hissed, "_I'll die without them." _

"I'll die!" Hiro screamed, still pounding his fists on the door of the unfamiliar room. "I'll die just like Tadashi! Don't leave me! Give them back! Help!"

Outside the door, which was in fact a guest room - one of the ones deeper into Fred's mansion than others - Fred, Baymax, and Gogo stood. Honey Lemon and Wasabi had gone to tell Aunt Cass that they had found Hiro, and that it wasn't safe for him to be home, leaving them three to guard the door, useless to do much else.

They had destroyed the microbots though, the ones that had still been with Hiro when he'd passed out on the docks. The ones that Hiro had tossed into the bay they could not even have a hope to fish out, and so those were still left there deep under the water, but the other bots had been crushed and burned and destroyed one by one.

"_Help! Give them back! Let me out!"_

Gogo grit her teeth, and popped a bubble of her gum loudly. Fred was pacing a few steps away, still suited up, worried. Baymax stood silently on, his eyes blinking and making sure that beyond the door Hiro was not hurt more than he had been when the team had finally caught up to him.

"_Let me out! Tasukete! I'll die! I'll die! Tadashi!"_

They didn't let him out, and Hiro's cries for the microbots and for his brother slowly faded away. Only then, once Baymax scanned through the door that Hiro was unconscious once more, did Gogo call Wasabi and Honey Lemon.

"Are you still there? Good. Get into Hiro's garage and look to see if there are any of the microbot plans left that he didn't destroy. We're going to need them."

It was time to finally start taking some steps to get their Hiro back. If the problem had been within the neurocranial transmitter, as Hiro had said, then they would figure out what that problem was, and they would reverse engineer it or do _something, anything, _to break Hiro's link with the microbots that was slowly but steadily tearing his mind apart. Hiro was the priority. Dead cops and broken old professors could be seen to after everything was done and the world was right again.

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><p><strong>Pleeeaaaseeee review!<strong>

**"Tasukete" - Japanese - translates to "Help" **


	8. Animus

**AN: strikes a pose. chapter 8 is here. still running low on words to use as chapter titles, so heY in your reviews *wink wink* you should suggest some more odd sounding words that I might be able to use. cause i dunno. words to match what generally happens in the chapter are hard to come by. Sorry btw if some of the titles dont seem to match up**

**_REMINDER_ to pls check out _"Betwixt the Blackout Curtain"_ another bh6 fic!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Chapter 8 - Animus: strong dislike or enmity. also: purpose, intention<p>

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><p>Robert Callaghan sat, still shaking like he would fall apart any moment, in a stiff metal chair before the man who had "rescued" him from prison. His wore new clothes - a plain dark colored hoodie, which had definitely seen better days and looked out of place on him due to his age, but was thick enough to guard against the San Fransokyo chill, and jeans - in place of his old prison garb, which had likely been thrown out.<p>

The man said his name was Yama, and that the Hamada brothers had gotten him and half of his main muscle thrown into jail.

"I heard of the hand you had in the death of the older one." Yama sneered, large girth barely fitting in his chair as he sat across from Callaghan. "The one with that damned moped."

Yama was a bot fighting _king, _not to mention the leader of one of the underground gangs that secretly ran large chunks of San Fransokyo. But he'd been knocked down a peg when, after Hiro had cheated him out of a large sum of money, the Hamadas had basically led Yama into the police. He'd been slapped with a criminal bot fighting record, and had had to work overtime pulling the strings behind the scenes to get let off with _just that. _When Yama had finally been released back into his city, ready to get revenge on the brothers who had nearly ruined him, Tadashi Hamada was dead, and Robert Callaghan had been arrested for destruction of property, multiple accounts of grievous assault, and first degree involuntary manslaughter.

So Robert Callaghan had been the man who Yama had turned to.

"The little one though, Zero. Hiro. Whatever his name." Yama leaned back in his chair a bit, "His brains would be useful. It's good you didn't off him too." Yama continued and then laughed, as if the murder of a young life that Callaghan had committed was a good joke to share casually as he discussed "business" with the ailing man before him. Business being used in the loosest sense of the term, as Callaghan was still disoriented from falling unconscious and then waking up somewhere completely new, and there were people holding guns posted in the corners of the room ready to shoot him should he not agree.

"What do you want from me?" Callaghan asked, voice steadier than it had been in weeks, even as his mind churred _I know what _I _want. I want the microbots. I want them. I need them. Need them. _Callaghan strangled those thoughts. He could not afford to break apart now. He knew he had to have all his wits, diminished and shaken though they might have been, about him when dealing with people such as Yama. "What reason do you have for breaking me out of prison?" Callaghan clenched his shaking, time worn fists against his knees, "Making me look like _more _of a criminal."

Yama raised an eyebrow, and eyed Callaghan appraisingly, leaning - if possible - further back in his chair as he said, "You _are _a criminal. Might as well go hard or go home as they say."

"What do you want?" Callaghan repeated, voice breaking only once at the end.

Yama fell silent, frowned, narrowed his eyes, and then leaned forward in his chair. A shame, after all the work he had done leaning back as much as possible.

"I want Hiro Hamada, and then, I want you and him to make me more of those little bots you used to trash half the city."

Callaghan almost objected that it hadn't been almost half the city, only a very specific building and along the path down the edge of the city where he had chased the Big Heroes before they had been heroes. But he _didn't_ object, because this was his opportunity, this was his _chance._

He did not respond immediately, wanting to make it seem like he was reluctant, and not eager, to kidnap Hiro Hamada and force the boy to make more microbots. Nothing less than a kidnapping would be necessary, after Hiro had so vehemently and bitterly stated that he would never make any more microbots.

But. Hiro's hands had been shaking. Just like Callaghan's own did.

Slowly, Callaghan nodded, "Alright..." He then nodded more confidently, "I'll do it, I'll work with you."

Yama smiled, and moved as if to rise from his chair, but Callaghan held his hands up, and the large bot fighter paused. "But I need information first," _Need it need them need the microbots. _Callaghan swallowed roughly, "I need information on Hiro, and then we need to do things the right way if we want to have any hope of him working with us." _Any hope of getting the microbots any hope of living and surviving and finally getting them._

Yama's laugh boomed in the small room, and he finally rose from his seat to walk over and clasp a hand on Callaghan's shoulder. The older, frailer man nearly buckled under the huge palm that suddenly enveloped his joint, but grinned shakily up at his new employer none the less.

"Good! This is good." Yama said, patting Callaghan's shoulder one more time before retracting his hand. "My men will get right on figuring out what that hustling brat has been doing lately."

Callaghan hoped it did not take long. He _needed_ those microbots.

The Big Hero 6, oblivious to the plans being brewed against them, also hoped it didn't take long too. At least, they hoped that the reconstruction of the neurocranial transmitter did not take long. The plans were messy, half digital, half physical paper, covered in Hiro's messy doodles and his chicken scratch scrawl of disjointed numbers and equations, with occasionally Tadashi's neat font squeezed between the lines. The notes were hard to follow, making more microbots during the process would likely be unavoidable, and it would be difficult to test if they got it right because none of them wanted to risk their brain becoming scrambled. To be reduced to such a state as Hiro and Professor Callaghan had, simply because they had worn the headband and had controlled the microbots for sparse handfuls of minutes, would help no one.

"How's it coming?" Honey asked, leaning over Wasabi's shoulder to stare at the largest bulk of the notes they were having trouble interpreting.

Wasabi groaned and scratched at the back of his head, "It's like trying to read _doctors'_ notes, and I'm no bio-engineer either, so all of Tadashi's contributions about the more biological parts of the brain stuff are just flying right over my head."

Honey Lemon frowned, and Gogo leaned in close as well. Fred, being the only non-science major of their group, had been left back at his home with Baymax to guard Hiro, while the three of them had made a quick stop at the SFIT lab to get some much needed supplies before heading over to the Hamada garage to work.

"Ugh." Gogo breathed, "I know we were there and helped some near the end of the process, but this is a _whole different level _of tech." She popped her gum loudly, the only sign of her nerves, "Who the hell even _is_ Hiro Hamada." Gogo grunted as she turned to walk away from Wasabi and Honey, moving back towards the 3D printer on the other side of the garage, trying not to remember the great ability of the microbots when they had been holding up a technicolor hole in the sky, "Kid's got too big a brain."

Wasabi only nodded absently, still staring at the notes, while Honey bit her lip and turned to the video call they had open, through Baymax, to Fred and the healthcare companion. "Hey, Fred, how's Hiro?"

Fred, who could be seen through the computer screen dozing, eternally suited up, against the wall outside Hiro's prison room, jerked awake with a snort, "Huh wha…?" He mumbled, smacking his lips and blinking slowly.

"Tell Fred to stop sleeping! If I don't get to sleep, he doesn't get to sleep!" Wasabi called from his station. Honey winced sympathetically at Fred, who had by that point woken enough to hear Wasabi's words.

Fred though merely grinned, rolled his eyes a bit at Wasabi, and responded to Honey Lemon as exuberant as always, which was a relief compared to the mood of the Hamada garage, "Hiro is A-OK! He's been quiet for awhile, but Baymax said he was still conscious, just not moving, so I was takin' the opportunity for a little recharge."

Baymax chimed in then, "Hiro has been conscious and unconscious off and on, though the unconscious intervals have mainly been natural sleep, with only a few fainting episodes. While conscious, he has not been moving or yelling like he did upon first waking. I believe he has gone into a very mild state of shock, cause either unknown or overstimulation of the senses. This overstimulation might be a symptom brought about by distance from the microbots, though this is also unknown."

Gogo, from across the garage, said, "Well thank you Baymax for a far more thorough report than Fred's."

"Heeeeey." Fred pouted.

"You're an English major too, where was all your descriptiveness and fancy vocabulary?"

"_Heeeeeeeeeey." _

Honey Lemon interrupted them, "That's good that Hiro is… okay." She said, "Though all the unknowns have still got me worried."

Before she could continue, something odd popped up in the corner of the computer screen. The computer was one of Hiro's that they had commandeered to use as the connection from Fred's home to the garage, and so Honey had no idea what type of business the small red box holding a large white exclamation mark had bouncing up and down in the corner of the screen.

"Honey Lemon?" Fred asked, as she stared intently at the hopping box, before slowly clicking on it. A box of text took up the screen then, covering Fred's face and dominating Honey's vision. Neither Gogo nor Wasabi, as intent in their work on the neurocranial transmitter they were, noticed her or Fred's or Baymax's odd silence yet. So Honey Lemon read the message.

"Oh no." Honey breathed, pressing a hand to her mouth the further down the message her eyes went. At this point, Gogo and Wasabi looked over, concerned. "_Oh no."_

"What is it? Wasabi asked.

In response, Honey Lemon shook her head, instead switching the open page on the computer back to the video feed of Fred, "Fred, I need you to crank up your family's security system to as safe as it can get!"

_That _got Gogo and Wasabi's full attention then, and they abandoned their stations to go over to their friend and see what had caused her to be so panicked. Fred too looked curious, but shocked, as he said hesitantly, "Uhm, I dunno really how to-"

"Fred." Honey cut him off, "Callaghan has escaped from prison."

Gogo and Wasabi sucked in twin breaths. Instantly, Fred's eyes lit up, not excitedly, more with the determined fire of a friend. He saluted Honey Lemon through the camera of Baymax, his expression stoney in its seriousness, "No worries! This place'll be armed to the teeth!" He hopped away from the camera a bit, and the screen seemed to shift as Baymax tilted his head. "No crazy super villain is gonna get our littlest guy."

"I too, will assist in these preventive and precautionary procedures." Baymax said.

Gogo, meanwhile, had pushed Honey's hands aside so that she could pull the alert window back up and read the report of Callaghan's escape for herself. It was obviously not written with public eyes in mind, and Gogo snapped another bubble of her gum, "That little - he hacked the police so he could know where there was crime for us to stop! I can't believe him!"

Honey reached over Gogo's arm and clicked away from the alert, and Fred's face, now covered with the top of his monster suit - so really, just a large eye - filled the screen. "I'm gonna go have Heathcliff step things up right now! There'll be spy movie invisible triplines and lasers and everything!" Fred said, the moment he could see Honey, Gogo, and Wasabi pressing in close behind them focus back on him. Then, Fred bounded away, Baymax turning with a few squeaks to watch him go down the hallway. Honey nodded, and she took that cue to also move away to get back to work, leaving the computer open as she pushed at Gogo's shoulder. Wasabi moved away instinctively, already hurrying back to the notes he had been working on before the alert had brought its worrying news.

"Well! We just have to work faster now!" Honey Lemon said, trying to push some of her usual optimism into her tone. "Gogo, you're good with fast," She grinned, "C'mon, lets do this."

Gogo nodded, cracked her knuckles - garnering a wince from Wasabi - and went over to snatch up some of the notes. "Yeah. Fast."

On the other side of the screen, with Baymax, while Fred went to go step up security, Hiro woke up. He did not move or speak though, merely continued to stare at the ceiling while static and the sound of feedback filtered slowly into his ears. Meanwhile, Callaghan was staring in shock at Yama, who stood smugly before him, satisfied with the information he had handed the ex-professor. A newspaper was clutched in Callaghan's shaking hands, and the headline read "_Local police officer thought to have been killed by missing kid genius Hiro Hamada."_

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><p><strong>Ppppppllleeeeaaaaassssseeeeeee review!<strong>


	9. Analogous

**AN: I'm really sorry this chapter took so long. I've kinda hit a little bit of a block for /all/ my ideas right now. Things might seem a little muddled in this chapter. I'm worried that I'm flip flopping characters' motives/thoughts. Hiro's especially. He ran away from his friends originally out of instinct and also because he was scared of them/of what was happening. then after the death thing that happened (which is going to continue to be used against him) he became scared for them. there are moments when he's in a lot of pain and going a bit nuts and is solely focused on getting the microbots though, and in those moments he's not thinking about his friends or of himself. I hope all this is clear in my writing and im sorry if it isnt. Things are still building slowly, and the path that Hiro is on is not a very fun one. Some big changes in him are going to be seen in the next couple chapters. **

**Blughhglhghghfg alRIGHT LETs get back into this story.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Big Hero 6**

_**Enjoy!**_

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><p>Chapter 9 - Analogous: having analogy; corresponding in some particular<p>

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><p>"Hiro. You must eat." Baymax's voice said faintly through the static, sounding like it was from somewhere just to the left of Hiro. The boy made a noncommittal noise, and Baymax continued, "Maintaining a healthy diet, especially during times of illness or stress, is crucial. This has already been neglected, and so I am helping you to get back on track."<p>

Hiro didn't respond negatively or positively, and so slowly, carefully Baymax reached out to the boy on the guest bed and began to help him into an upright sitting position. For Hiro, Baymax's stable hands on his shaking back was a relief. They were something to ground him other than the bed he had been lying on for who knew how long, and so he did not fight as Baymax forced him to sit up, in fact, he leaned into Baymax's arms.

"'M sorry Baymax." Hiro whispered, voice scratchy from all his yelling.

"Do not apologize. My job is to heal the sick and injured. This is my job. I am here to help." Baymax said, misinterpreting Hiro's apology. Hiro had been apologizing for being a burden and for those moments when he would act chaotically against his friends - moments he did not remember, but that the bruises on his hands and the rasp of his voice told him loudly of. But Baymax had simply thought Hiro was apologizing for being unable to sit up and feed himself due to all his shaking and fits that he was having because of withdrawal and distance from the microbots. The simple conclusion that Baymax had come to was somewhat comforting, and Hiro smiled weakly and patted with a shaking hand Baymax's arm that was hooked around his small back.

But then, that hand arm was retracting, moving out from behind Hiro as Baymax stiffened suddenly and tilted his round head toward the shut door of the guest bedroom. Hiro fell back, hitting the headboard which kept him sitting up, and he looked at Baymax in confusion.

"...B-baymax?"

Baymax blinked at the door again. "One moment, Hiro. Please attempt to eat while I go check on an anomaly." Baymax bent to the bedside table, picked up the tray of soup and other soft foods, and pressed it into Hiro's jittering hands. Some of the soup splashed over the edge of the bowl, and Hiro quickly moved the tray back to the bedside table the moment Baymax let go. "I will return to assist you shortly."

Hiro watched Baymax leave with twitching, blinking eyes, and flinched very slightly as the door lock clicked back into place. Words swirled for a split second of panic in his mind. _Trapped let me out let me out help me tasukete tasukete nii-chan tasukete._ But after a few moments of silence - Hiro did not count the chattering of his teeth clicking together as a sound really anymore - in which there was no indication from beyond the door that Fred, Baymax, or anyone else was out in the hall, Hiro took a shuddering breath to calm himself and then reached unsteadily for the tray of food again. He managed to lift a few of the soft crackers from the edge, and half-heartedly pressed one, then two past his lips. But then his arm dropped, and Hiro looked toward the door again. Baymax still hadn't returned, and the time it had taken for him to listlessly chew two crackers seemed like it had been a thousand years.

So Hiro sighed, and reached then for the bowl of soup. His hands passed over the uneaten crackers, and he cupped the bowl between them to lift it.

A dull whisper of sound echoed just beneath the buzz in Hiro's head then, "_Hhhh."_

Hiro's hands froze, and he strained himself, trying to hear the whisper more clearly,

"_Hhhhiro."_

"_Hiro."_

The bowl slipped from his hands, and the hot soup inside spilled itself across the ground. Hiro didn't notice. He recognized that voice.

"Leave me alone." Hiro said, reaching his hands up to cover his ears.

"_Hiro you have to listen to me. There's not much time."_

Oh, the voice wasn't coming from inside his mind. Hiro pulled his hands away and pushed himself up further on his bed, already searching for the source where Robert Callaghan's voice was coming from.

"_Hiro, you aren't safe there."_

His friends cornering him on the docks and dropping chem balls toward his head and chasing him through a construction site. Hiro remembered all that. He searched more frantically for Callaghan's voice, needing to shut it up. "You're w-wrong." He said, even as his mind screamed that he wasn't really safe there, that he was trapped, that he was dangerous to his friends and that they were dangerous to him.

"_Hiro. You aren't. They don't trust you. You_ killed _someone. You can't really believe they've got you locked up so they can help you."_

"S-shut up!" _Let me out need the microbots need them they can help me help me let me out I'll hurt I'll kill they'll kill me I'll die-!_

"_Hiro, I can offer you someplace safe, we can build more microbots, everything will be alright I promise-"_

"No!" Hiro yelled, finally finding the small black bug, fastened to the underside of the tray Baymax had brought in, and ripping it away from the tray. "You only want the microbots, that's all you want! I told you I wouldn't make more and I dropped most of the others into the bay!"

"_We're just the same Hiro. You want and need them too. Don't try and be the hero this time. You'll only get hurt." _

"I don't need them I'm not like _you._ My friends will fix me they said they'd _fix me!" _

"_And you believe they can do that? It's impossible. We _are _neurotransmitters ourselves now Hiro. There is no cure but connection to the microbots that complete us and that we are now programmed to control. Your friends are biding their time as they figure out how to get rid of you without feeling too guilty."_

Hiro dug into the small black bug with his nails, and tore it apart, revealing a bright blinking red light embedded into the wires and tech inside. Callaghan's voice spluttered and died with static. Just as it did so, the window of the guest room Hiro was in, which had been blocked off and dark for the entirety of his stay so far, suddenly let some light in. Hiro turned his head slowly to see why right at the moment that the glass shattered, and as he held up his arms to block any stray glass from hitting his face, someone grabbed his wrist. There were many colorful women with painted faces and done up dark hair, with one or two men with strong arms and heavy glares coming in behind them. They were definitely gang members of some kind, though why they were there, Hiro had no clue. He struggled against them all as more hands bruised his thin arms, his mind itching for the microbots, the image of a policeman being punched through with a dark spike flashing behind his eyes with each of his current attackers in that policeman's place. Baymax reentered the room then, and Hiro screamed when one of the unknown Fujita women was able to surprise the robot and duck the quick karate strike that Baymax had thrown out. Hiro was useless as Baymax stumbled and fell, unable to remain upright as the air left his body through the sharp puncture that the Fujita had managed to put in the white balloon skin.

"Baymax!" Hiro screamed, even as thick arms hooked around his chest and dragged him toward the open window. "_Baymax!"_

"_We're going to work great together, Hiro." _Callaghan's voice said, even though Hiro had destroyed the bug. The old ex-professor sounded desperate, on the verge of madness, but _sorry. _"_We never got a chance to at SFIT, but I had worked with Tadashi, and he was brilliant. Being able to see you recreate your microbots and help you do that will be an honor." _

"No! No no no no! Baymax! No! I won't do it I won't I- _Baymax_!"

Callaghan's voice was replaced with a far deeper one, one that Hiro recognized but also did not. He was far too panicked, far too focused upon reaching Baymax, to try and identify it from his memory though. "Shut that brat up. Don't knock him out though. Don't want his big brain any more scrambled."

When another yell for Baymax was cut off, Hiro found his breathing suddenly obstructed. Sticky duct tape was wrapped around the lower half of his face, and it swallowed his screams effectively. Hiro's wrists were trapped next, bound together with more duct tape, and his arms then were hooked over the head of one of the Fujita so she could grab at his knees and hold him tightly to her back. Baymax flopped and struggled on the floor of the room as Hiro, eyes wide and fearful, was pushed through the window and then carried out of sight on speedy roller skate wheels.

Fred's house was by no means easy to escape from though. As the Fujita attempted to smuggle Hiro away through the darkened yard, all the small lights set up in the grass to illuminate the fancy hedges and statues lit up brightly, startling the gang members into stopping. When no immediate threat presented itself though, they continued onwards hurriedly, but cautiously, assuming and attributing the sudden turning on of the lights to a simple motion detector. At least until a huge, blue, monstrous blur slammed into the side of the pack of Fujita, yelling chaotically as alarm sirens began to blare.

The Fujita scattered, and flames licked the air as Fred fought to reach the woman who had Hiro held tightly against her back. Hiro tried to cry out through the duct tape to his friend, tried to struggle and fight, but his body was trembling and sluggish. Another blackout was coming, _of course it was_. Hiro could feel himself beginning to be overwhelmed by the sight of the battle in the bright lights of Fred's lawn, the high pitched sounds of the Fujita as they skated through the grass as easily as if it were smooth concrete, the dull buzz that was rising in volume, and his own overwhelming emotions in the wake of hearing all that Callaghan had said through the small black microphone.

Hiro's arms were the first thing to relax. His fingers stilled from their trembling, and his elbows relaxed on the Fujita's shoulders. His legs went next, then his back slumped, and then, the familiar screaming pain tore through his mind, and Hiro's eyes fell shut on fire and pale faces.

When his eyes next opened there was none of the chaos from before. Hiro was simply sitting in a chair, in a quiet room, with Robert Callaghan sitting across from him. He had no idea what had happened to get him there, and in the back of his mind, worry for Fred and Baymax poked at him, but Hiro felt too numb to pay attention to that prodding and worry. He blinked as his ex-professor, not quite recovered from his post-blackout daze yet, then glanced at Callaghan's hands, and then at his own hands. Both set of hands, old and young, were shaking because of a shared reason.

"Hiro?"

The voice snapped Hiro from his daze, and he looked with wide eyes up at his brother's murderer. Callaghan looked different than he had clad in prison garb, now wearing a dark hoodie that didn't suit him at all, but his face was still haggard and his eyes were still twitching with a touch of madness in them. Hiro felt sick with the fact that, like how their hands shook similarly, his eyes looked the same.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review! and if you could, please legitimately let me know how I'm doing with continuity and consistency in this story. Objective opinions are really helpful and i'm really worried i'm backtracking on my plotthe character motives a lot**


	10. SORRY!

**Yep. I'm doing something illegal. posting an author's note as a chapter. Oh gosh. I'm a criminal now. Lock me up send me to jail take away my fanfiction license.**

Alright, sorry about this, but this story is officially going on **Hiatus** for awhile. There's quite a few really important details that, when reading back on it, I'm not too fond of (such as the sudden death of the cop, the lack of continuity with Callaghan and Hiro's actions while suffering from the microbot "withdrawal" and other things.) This plot isn't really working for me anymore - and while I have had a clear climax in mind, the build up has just got a mind of its own, and I'm not even too sure about what the ending is even going to be like. Things are going to be spotty with this story from here on out, and I'll likely pick it up again when I've got more time to revise and just write the entire story out at once. I'm working on switching my fanfiction style from "write one chapter. post it. write next chapter. post it." to "write everything, edit everything, post one chapter at a time." It's going to be a slow, uphill struggle, but overall will be a heck of a better way to write and manage these stories.

While this story is going on Hiatus though (joining the KYHD series and Flight of the Dragonlords. let us bow our heads for those stories as they gather dust and wait for the time when they can return) keep on the look out for oneshots from me, updates on Betwixt the Blackout Curtain, and possibly new stories soon once I manage to force myself into the "write everything, edit everything, post one chapter at a time style" and feel confident with a story.

Thank you all for your patience, and I'm sorry to do this to you all, but honestly, things are gonna be so much better when I pick this story and all my other plot-messy ones up again.

-Ghost


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